One-stop shop dev’t center launched for Mindanao cacao farmers

By Carina L. Cayon

DAVAO CITY, May 29 (PIA) – A one-stop shop and development center was recently launched in the city to cater to cacao farmers and stakeholders in Mindanao, aiming to boost the quality of cacao products which have high demand in the global market.

The Cacao Industry Development Association of Mindanao Inc. (CIDAMI) established the Cacao Development Center at Tulip Drive, Ecoland, Davao City which had a soft opening on May 23 this year.

CIDAMI Executive Director Valente D. Turtur said the center would serve as a venue for cacao farmers and other stakeholders to avail of various services such as training and seminar programs, farming techniques, good agricultural practices, integrated pest management, marketing and technology transfer.

Turtur told the Philippine Information Agency-XI that the center’s services would address the need of improving the quality as well as meeting the quantity requirement of cacao products in the local and international market.

“We can’t demand for a good price if we don’t have the volume needed in the market,” he stated.

He bared that 30,000-35,000 metric tons of cacao beans are required annually by the local market which imports raw cacao produce to address the demand.

He lamented that the country only produces about 20% of the local market demand alone, noting that the annual yields would only reach up to 7,000 metric tons by which 6,000 MT come from Mindanao, and the 1,000 MT are obtained from the rest of the country.

With the establishment of the center, CIDAMI envisions for Mindanao to yield 100,000 MT of cacao by 2020, Turtur intimated.

However, he said that the assistance and services at the center would not be provided for free, saying that interested stakeholders would have to pay reasonable fees to defray expenses.

He said CIDAMI also aims to establish data base of the cacao industry through the center which entails data gathering on the number of farmers, areas planted to cacao and how much are the yields monthly and yearly.

CIDAMI is a newly-created organization of cacao industry players involved in whole value added chain of the cacao products from seeds to bars.

The Davao City-based association comprises of groups and individual members of farmers’ cooperatives and organizations, nursery operators, processors and traders from all over Mindanao. (PIA-11/Carina L. Cayon)