Banana chip makers bond vs cavendish invasion

By Frinston Lim
Inquirer Mindanao

TAGUM CITY, Philippines—Banana chip makers here are urging the government to intervene and put a stop to the massive expansion of Cavendish banana plantations.

Ian Neo, an executive of Four Seasons Fruits Corp. based in Apokon Village, said the continued expansion of plantations devoted to the Cavendish variety of bananas was threatening the banana chips industry, which is dependent on the Cardava (saba) variety.

Cavendish bananas are sold fresh in both the domestic and export market and apparently growing them is more profitable than the Cardava variety.

Thousands of hectares of land formerly cultivated with Cardava variety, the main ingredient for banana chips, are now being planted to Cavendish bananas, said Neo, who claimed to be also speaking on behalf of other small-time banana-chip producers.

"The supply of Cardava in the province is really affected by the expansion of Cavendish plantations that we in the industry would now try to outdo each other in capturing what remains in the local Cardava market," he said.

Data from the provincial agriculture office revealed that about 40,000 hectares of land are planted to Cavendish bananas in Davao del Norte and that the figure is increasing.

Neo said his company alone processes 30 to 60 tons of Cardava daily but sometimes his company can’t even find 20 tons.

He said this would adversely affect their product output and the supply to their markets in Europe, North America, Japan, China and Korea.

"There are times the daily supply was so low, for example below 20 tons, that we have to stop operations as expenses are higher than output," Neo said.

He said the temporary stoppage would affect the company's 250 employees.

Neo acknowledged that companies planting the Cavendish variety were quite influential but he said banana chips makers were now banding themselves together to form a "formidable lobby group."

He said that if they were one group, government officials would listen to them and they would be able to "fight back" against the "ever-expanding Cavendish plantations."

"Though demands from abroad for Philippine banana chips have dropped by 30 to 40 percent from 2007, still our local materials are very insufficient to fill the existing demand," he said.

Tagum's banana chip industry alone generates at least P1 billion in annual revenues, according to government data.

Neo said his company, with assets running to almost P70 million, pays at least half a million pesos of tax and other fees to the city government every year.