Section 2, The Star
By LOH FOON FONG
CLUSTERS of coconuts lay wasted by the roadside and in the plantations of smallholders. Some plantations are overrun with undergrowth. These are common sights in the main coconut-planting areas in Sabak Bernam, Selangor, Teluk Intan and Bagan Datoh in Perak, and in Batu Pahat, Johor.
Smallholders lament over the poor demand since late 1999 when the price of coconut plummeted to an all-time low. Since then life has been rough for many of the 60,000 smallholders who make up 95% of coconut planters in the Peninsular.
"Nowadays I don't harvest coconuts anymore because it costs more to harvest than to sell," says Muhajil Taib, 67, pointing to the clusters of unsold nuts in his 2ha plantation in Kampung Parit Baru Baruh, Sabak Bernam, north of Selangor. Some of the coconuts have germinated while others have gone bad.
It costs farmers RM50 to hire workers to lop every 1,000 coconuts and another RM50 to husk them. The coconuts are sold to middlemen at RM100 or less per 1,000 nuts.
"There's the added cost of transportation, pesticides and land clearing," says farmer Shahlan Rijau, 53, who gathers coconuts and sells them to middlemen.
Another farmer from Sabak Bernam, Deman Dimin, 83, says he paid workers to harvest coconuts from his 4ha plantation and on both occasions, the nuts were hardly sold. "I'm too old to lop the coconuts myself. I had to pay people to do that and I incurred loses," says Deman.
If the farmers are fortunate, they earn a paltry RM40 for each harvest of 3,000 nuts. Since it is not cost-effective, many farmers are harvesting the nuts only twice or thrice a year.
A wholesaler in Sabak Bernam, Tan Pak Chong, says profit is marginal. "At least half the nuts are of poor quality. We have to throw them away because they have germinated, gone bad or are too small."
Tan pays RM100 for every 1,000 nuts. The good quality ones are selected and sold at 40 sen per nut.
According to industry sources, the good weather worldwide had resulted in a glut of coconuts last year.
Raudah Abdul Hamid, 11, from Kampung Parit Baru dropped out of school last year because her father could no longer afford to send her to school.
"I miss my friends and teachers," says Raudah.
Her father, Abdullah Abdul Hamid, 59, who has 10 children says life has been hard on the family since the coconut price fell.
Abdullah lops the coconuts himself and sells them to customers. He earns RM300 for a two-month harvest. He sells bananas and does odd jobs to supplement his income.
Muhamad Jail Ikhsan, 42, a farmer from Kampung Parit Baru in Sabak Bernam blames the dire situation on the excessive number of import permits issued by the government during the coconut shortage in 1998.
"The government was too hasty in controlling the price and gave out too many import permits and that affected us. We want the permits to be removed," says Muhamad.
Going nuts over shortage
While farmers lament the lack of demand, ironically manufacturers are at their wits' end in trying to get enough coconuts to meet their needs.
"We need more than one million nuts a month and we can't even get half of that. We're incurring losses every day," says Mohd Ghufran Mohd Irfan, personnel and administration manager of Linaco Manufacturing (M) Sdn Bhd in Batu Pahat. The company exports coconut cream powder to Europe and the Middle East.
"In Johor, nobody's interested in harvesting coconut because of the low market price. We've also asked Fama (Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority) to supply us with coconuts but they too had not been able to meet our demands," says Mohd Ghufran.
The company imports 40% of its coconuts from Indonesia.
"We would like to use 100% Malaysian coconuts but there's just not enough," says Mohd Ghufran.
Status Point Sdn Bhd in Teluk Intan is another company that does not seem to get enough nuts.
"We need 120,000 nuts a day but we can only get 60,000 from our own plantation and from United Plantations," says K. Ramakrishnan, the factory manager.
Status Point produces desiccated coconut, coconut shell flour and Nata de Coco, a popular dessert. It exports its products mostly to Europe, the United States, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
Ramakrishnan says the company needs high quality nuts and does not buy from smallholders because the quality is inconsistent and poor.
"When we first started out in 1994, we bought a lot of coconuts from smallholders and also imported from Indonesia, but that did not work out well. One-third of local nuts had to be rejected and the rest were of questionable quality. Despite our careful selection, clients complained that the quality was inconsistent and the nuts were rancid at times."
Ramakrishnan says the company also stopped importing from Indonesia because the nuts were of poor quality or infested with beetles.
"The market is very competitive. Our clients want quality. Local farmers have to change according to the requirements of the world market."
Ramakrishnan added that smallholders do not have proper husbandry and do not harvest at the right time, partly because most young men have migrated to the cities and the plantations are in a state of neglect.
Amy Mok, marketing manager of Emanate Marketing Sdn Bhd in Sabak Bernam says she does not buy coconuts from smallholders because many of their trees are old and too high, so it is difficult to harvest young nuts. The company needs 200,000 to 300,000 young nuts a month to quench the thirst for coconut water.
Meanwhile, United Plantations Bhd research director Dr Gurmit Singh says Malaysia is short of 250 million coconuts every year. United Plantations produces 40 million nuts a year.
In response to the plight of smallholders, the government has drastically reduced the number of import permits for coconuts. Statistics from the Agriculture Ministry show that 2,114 permits were issued in 1999 to overcome the shortage of coconuts. The number was reduced to 315 last year.
"The government is putting pressure on factories to buy from local smallholders but we cannot completely stop the issuing of permits because the industry needs a constant supply," says Chan Han Hee, director of Industrial Crops and Floriculture Division at the Agriculture Department.
Chan says the ministry has asked Fama and local farmers' organisations to serve as collection points for buyers.
However, manufacturers and farmers feel that Fama has not effectively linked them together.
"They do not have the infrastructure or the capacity to do so," says Mohd Ghufran.
Missing link
Why are the needs of farmers and manufacturers not matched?
A spokesman from Fama, a government agency which helps farmers to market their produce, says the body is only one of the many buyers in the market besides the middlemen, manufacturers and consumers. It does not function like Bernas which is the sole agent for buying rice, regardless of quality, at a fixed price.
"There was hardly any demand from manufacturers last year. Moreover, demand is based on the quality needed by buyers," said the spokesman. "Manufacturers are paying a low price for coconuts and farmers are not interested in harvesting them. They neglect their plantations and due to the irregular harvest, the quality deteriorates, pushing the price lower. It's a vicious cycle."
Farmer Muhamad Jail pointed out that Fama could have played a bigger role. "They can easily gather the coconuts from us and supply them to buyers."
Mohd Sofiyuddin Ahmad, chairman of the Saving the Nation's Coconut Industry Committee (Sabak Bernam branch) set up last October, calls on the government to set up an agency to handle the marketing of coconuts more effectively.
"Some smallholders were given seedlings of the new hybrid, Matag, but there was no follow-up after that. The shoots were either attacked by Rhinoceros beetles or uprooted and eaten up by wild boars," says Mohd Sofiyuddin.
"Some of us went to the Agriculture Department to ask for seedlings of the new hybrid but they did not have any supply.
"The committee sent a petition and recommendations to the Agriculture Ministry last year but apparently nothing has been done," adds Mohd Sofiyuddin.
Under the Seventh Malaysia Plan (1996-2000), a replanting and rehabilitation programme was drawn up to revive the coconut industry, but its implementation leaves much room for improvement.
Chan says the government hopes to intensify efforts to revive the industry in the Eighth Malaysia Plan (2001-2005): 7,000ha will be replanted and 10,000ha have been identified for rehabilitation.
Vast potential
More than 20 years ago, coconuts were planted to provide shade for cocoa plants. When cocoa price plunged in the mid-1980s, smallholders turned to coconut as a source of income.
Coconut was never considered a priority crop and it is not surprising that coconut planting areas have been shrinking over the years. In Peninsular Malaysia, there were 116,000ha of coconut trees last year compared with 219,558ha in 1984. The rate is declining at 4% a year, according to statistics from the Agriculture Ministry.
"Although there is a steady decline in coconut planting areas, there is consistent demand in local consumption," says Chan. "The government recognises the substantial demand for coconuts in many processed products and wants to revive the industry."
Seventy per cent of local coconut supply goes to factories and rest is for domestic consumption.
The enormous potential for coconut products is demonstrated in the case of Status Point. The company started out with producing just copra six years ago. It has grown tremendously since it branched out into providing downstream products such as desiccated coconut for export.
"The coconut is fast becoming a high value added product and traded throughout the world. The World Trade Organisation is setting standards for coconut products. There are so many uses for coconut and it is nature's best health drink," says C.S. Chung, director of M&S Food Industries Sdn Bhd in Ipoh.
Downstream coconut products such as desiccated coconut, coconut milk, and spray-dry coconut have come up very strongly, says Gurmit Singh.
In view of the commercial potential, manufacturers are calling on the government to play a more dynamic role in supporting the coconut industry.
In the Philippines, the government helps farmers by providing seedlings, technological aid and marketing infrastructure, says Ramakrishnan of Status Point. He added that perhaps this could be implemented in our country, too.
Indeed much can be done to give the local industry a boost. The quality and yield of the nuts can be improved, and the farmers educated on disease and pest management. More importantly, marketing strategies need to be seriously looked into by Fama and other cooperatives to better match the needs of farmers and manufacturers.
Page 5
Hope for the coconut
By LOH FOON FONG
COCONUT is the most important palm of the humid tropics with over 11 million hectares planted in 86 countries. About 96% of the crop is grown by resource-poor smallholders. Besides the traditional products of copra, coconut oil and copra meal, coconut is used in a variety of food and non-food products.
Despite the vast potential of coconut products, farmers worldwide are suffering due to declining yields and decreasing farm productivity, says Pons Batugal, senior scientist and coordinator of the International Coconut Genetic Resources Institute (Cogent).
"There is a need to develop improved varieties with high yields to increase the income of farmers," says Batugal.
However, genetic erosion or the loss of important coconut germplasm in coconut-producing countries is occurring at a rapid rate due to the inability of many countries to collect and conserve germplasm which are threatened by natural calamities, urbanisation and the shift to other crops.
These countries also lack the ability to characterise and evaluate the field performance of conserved germplasm or to exchange disease-free germplasm with other countries due to the tedious nature of export clearances and the lack of disease-indexing capacity.
To safeguard the future of the coconut industry and the future of smallholders, the Italy-based International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), with the endorsement of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, established Cogent in 1992 to promote an international collaboration programme on genetic resource conservation and use.
That same year, Cogent established a multi-site International Coconut Genebank (ICG). Consisting of a regional genebank in each of the five Cogent regions, namely Southeast and East Asia, South Asia, South Pacific, Africa and the Indian Ocean, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
The germplasm conserved in each regional genebank will be contributed by country members of each region. Indonesia, India, Papua New Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire and Brazil were identified as suitable countries to host the ICG in their respective regions.
Malaysia started participating in collecting native germplasm in 1994. Currently, 44 varieties have been collected.
"We hope to bring in germplasm from other countries this year to carry out studies here," says Batugal.
"However, we can only exchange plants at the embryo stage due to the danger of foreign plant diseases. We teach the locals how to grow the plants from test-tubes. We have trained two Malaysians to carry out the work."
(Germplasm can be in the form of seedlings, embryos, pollens or fruits.)
Cogent has 1,338 coconut varieties conserved in 20 countries. Besides offering new hybrids, consultants advise farmers on intercropping and teach them to utilise all parts of the coconut for high-value products.
"In the past, farmers sold coconut in the form of copra, earning US$450 a year. However, if they sell all parts of the coconut, their income can increase five- to 10-fold," says Batugal.
Cogent has 35 member countries which are committed to sustaining coconut production.
