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DAVAO
CITY—Mango growers here have sustained losses in their
production mainly due to the changing weather and warned
that “unfavorable other factors” could further dampen
interest in producing for the global market, an industry
council executive said.
Antonio
Teh, president of the Southern Mindanao Mango Industry
Development Council Inc., said “planters and growers
don’t know when to induce flowering and when to apply
pesticides because of the weather that keeps on changing
from the usual normal dry season-wet season that we
know.”
Teh said
the council could not yet ascertain the volume of
reduction during the last two years, but he said losses
“could not be less that 30 percent, and could even reach
50 percent of the expected production.”
With
appropriate technology applied to pass global
phytosanitary standards, a hectare of mango trees would
produce 100 kilos of the fruit per tree. Each hectare
could accommodate 100 trees on a 10 meter-by-10 meter
planting pattern.
“The
rains have become unpredictable, that you don’t know
when it would come,” Teh said, saying that its
repercussion was far-ranging. “When you decide to induce
flowering, the rains would come and pluck those
flowers,” he said.
“And
when you’re lucky to go to the next stage of the flowers
beginning to fold up to produce the ping-pong-sized
fruit without the rains, they would come and destroy
them,” he added.
And it
was not only the unpredictable rains that planters and
growers were beginning to see as threats, than the usual
help, to production. “There is also the strong wind,
which would also blow the flowers away.”
Mango
growers have been griping about climate change and have
inquired on whether the government’s weather bureau
could provide them reliable forecasts.
The
Davao Region Mango Contractors Association (Daremca) has
previously repeated its appeal to the government to help
it provide guides in the changing weather patterns, as
its members sustained a drop of as much as 60 percent of
their output in early 2006, the worst they sustained
since the fledgling Daremca was formed.
Mindo
Cuda, an officer of the SM Mango Council, said the Davao
region was supposed to be the region with the
third-largest aggregate area planted to mangoes, behind
Central Luzon and Ilocos Region. There were about 18,000
hectares planted to mango in the region composed of the
three Davao provinces, Compostela Valley, Davao City and
the Island Garden City of Samal.
By
production, Davao del Sur accounted for half of the
entire production, and Davao Oriental accounted for
one-fourth. The rest of the production was being shared
by the other areas, including Samal Island, groomed in
the past to be another mango country.
Cuda
said the Philippines has a supposed productivity of 5.5
tons per hectare per fruiting episode.
An
Australia-commissioned study by Filipino scientists in
2006 has certified the Davao del Sur mangoes as fit for
export to Australia. The province has yet to capitalize
on that study.
Mango
was the sixth top agriculture export of the country,
producing 919 million metric tons in 2006, with a value
of $18.72 billion.
Teh has
suggested to growers and planters to pool their volumes
for a synchronized or simultaneous application of
vapor-heat treatment to save on cost and beat the
competition posed by industry buyers. |
