Age crimp

LOCO OVER COCO. President Aquino shows “buko” juice in a pack from the Philippines which is now a craze in the United States during his speech upon arrival from the US. At right, Madonna touts a coco drink from a company where she was reported to have invested $10 million. ARNOLD ALMACEN; PHOTO FROM LAX-MAGAZINE.COM

“Loco over coco” read the Inquirer headline. A front-page photo depicted President Aquino drinking buko juice at his airport press conference upon returning from the United States.

Coconut water is emerging  as America’s “new natural sports drink,” P-Noy told welcomers. Pepsi Co. and Vita Coco spearhead this now “hundred million-dollar industry.” Other firms may join an emerging “buko” queue.

Palms are planted in 68 of 79 provinces and sprawl over 27 percent of agricultural land. But most of the trees are senile. So where are the coconuts?

“With two of these palm trees, a whole family of 10 can sustain itself,” marveled  historian Antonio Pigafetta (1491-1534). This Venetian was among 18 of Ferdinand Magellan’s original  240-man crew who made it back to Europe.

Coconuts are a fixture in color-drenched  Fernando Amorsolo paintings. This palm provides livelihood for more than two million Filipinos. Most till slivers of land. Others are landless tenants.

Factor in their families, and you find that 10 million use this tree. As they did before the overseas Filipino worker remittances era, coconuts still bring in foreign exchange.

Systemic plunder over the years reduced coconut to a “sunset industry.” Coco levy pillage impoverished  millions. Did looting embed coconut buccaneers in first places at table?

Ask the Arroyo Supreme Court. Most justices agreed to Eduardo Cojuangco pocketing 16.2 million San Miguel Corp. shares by dipping into coco levies wrung by martial law bayonets.

“The biggest joke to hit the century,” dissented  then Justice, now Ombudsman, Conchita Carpio Morales.

“He who plants a coconut tree plants food and drink, vessels and clothing, a home for himself and a heritage for his children,” South Sea islanders say. Here few noticed that theft of coco levies crippled vital replanting programs.

About 44 million coconut trees are over 60 years old. They bear less than 10 nuts yearly—puny compared to the 45 to 60 nuts of their prime. Industry-wide aging is reflected in a 13-percent production slump. Coconut oil production slipped by a third.

This age crimp will intensify over the next three to five years. The oldest trees will stop bearing fruits. Yields from senile trees will  shrink more. Patchy replanting can’t catch up.

If P-Noy is right, US demand for buko juice could rise to new levels over the next three to five years. But will we have the juice to sell? Or must we direct would-be buyers to shop next door—thanks to the coco levy thieves?

That would be Jakarta. Indonesia  has over 3.74 million hectares planted to coconuts. Over three million Indonesian households depend on the tree. Indonesians  replanted far more than we did. Some Filipinos fret that Indonesia could dislodge the Philippines from the top slot among coconut exporters.

History deliberately replayed is farce. Coconut will not be the first vital industry we have run to the ground.

In 1575, over 92 percent of the country was forested, notes the Food and Agriculture Organization. “The Philippines was the first Asia-Pacific country, in the post-World War II era, to extensively liquidate its forest wealth.”

Yearly freighters hauled out 10 million cubic meters of wood for markets abroad. We didn’t  reforest or reinvest. Forest barons acted as if they had no grandchildren. We strutted as “Timber Prima Donna” in the 1960s.

By the 1980s, this once-lavish resource petered out. We now shop for timber abroad. “Net imports cost the country 10 times the value of its forestry exports.” We are today’s wood pauper.

Will coconuts and then fisheries also go down the same drain?

Rewind to 1973. The Marcos dictatorship then clamped on Presidential Decree 276. Among other things, it asserted that “coco levies” were owned by cronies “in their private capacities.” Taxes morphed into individual booty.

If this decree is not scrubbed as unconstitutional, “President Marcos found a legal and valid way to steal,” wrote then newspaper  columnist Antonio Carpio. He is arguably the best Supreme Court chief justice we never had.

Such decrees formed  part of the “New Society’s” institutionalized pillage. As capo di tutti capi, Marcos divided up agriculture among camp followers. Antonio Floirendo was assigned bananas. The late Roberto Benedicto oversaw sugar. Eduardo Cojuangco emerged as coconut czar.

After People Power, “protracted conflict” persisted to prevent small farmers from getting back levies extorted by martial law bayonets. One of President Joseph Estrada’s last acts before People Power II erupted, was to sign Executive Orders 313 and 315. “Erap delivered the levy—estimated at over P100 billion—to cronies,” Sun Star noted. “It was grand larceny that needed ever-larger doses of hypocrisy.”

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo dissipated coco levies recovered by the Davide Supreme Court which declared them public funds. The “Brat Pack”—congressmen allied with Cojuangco—tried but failed to impeach Davide.

Inquirer published  former Solicitor General  Francisco Chavez’s analysis on how coco levies were laundered to bankroll San Miguel purchases. Erin Tañada filed House Bill 5070 to ensure that the 27 percent of the Coconut Industry Investment Fund is safeguarded. Come to  the farmers’ aid, the CBCP-National  Secretariat for Social Action urged Aquino.

Thousands of farmers went to their graves clutching worthless coconut levy certificates. A buko juice boom will be too late for them.

Will it also be late for P-Noy? A new tree will bear the first nuts only after seven years. That’s Agronomy 101.

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