I have just returned from an assignment in Liberia to help develop the country’s untapped coconut resources, a project dubbed “Always Use Your Coconut!” My hosts were amazed upon learning of the coconut’s many income-generating uses, thanks to Filipino ingenuity and resourcefulness.
Indeed, I very proudly demonstrate that it doesn’t take rocket science for poor coconut farmers to earn a living from “the tree of life.” And yet when “Da Kokonut Lady” (as I am now known in Liberia) returns to her native Philippines—to the coconut hinterlands—she is confronted by the harsh realities on the ground that present a stark contrast to all the glowing platitudes about our innate virtues.
For example, many large and small community-based coco coir processing enterprises that benefit thousands of poor coconut farmers have suspended their operations because of delayed payments of receivables from highly publicized government infrastructure projects. So severe is the problem that these enterprises have been forced to focus on the highly-competitive export market: a glaring irony in landslide- and erosion-prone Philippines, which clearly stands to benefit the most from the use of locally-made, environment-friendly, and cheaper coco coir products.
It is nothing short of painful and ironic for someone who dispenses made-in-the-Philippines knowledge and expertise to help uplift the lives of the poor in other countries—and then to come home to find out that her very own people cannot avail themselves of such blessings.
By PERLA LIMBAGA MANAPOL
(4331 Blackwood St., Newbury Park, CA 91320, USA)
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