The Department of Agriculture (DA) in Region 11 urged farmers to continuously seek adequate knowledge to further boost local cacao production.
“Apart from providing inputs and infrastructure to cacao farmers, we are also generating technical information on cacao production and processing,” DA Regional Director Remelyn Recoter said.
This she said during the graduation of 454 School-on-the-Air (SOA) on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) on Cacao Production held recently in Davao City.
“Utilizing the power of radio, SOA had been one of the effective platforms in disseminating technical information in agriculture,
especially to those farmers in remote areas who could hardly attend formal training,” she said.
Recoter also urged the farmer-graduates to apply their acquired knowledge from planting, fertilization, pruning, harvesting, drying and fermentation in their respective farms and share it to other farmers, as well.
“The SOA has enabled us to learn various techniques in cacao production, such as the pruning techniques for sunlight to penetrate. We have also learned the proper time to harvest cacao pods and bean fermentation to produce quality cacao beans,” said Salvador Balmes, who delivered a message on behalf of the SOA graduates.
DA-High Value Crops Development Program Regional Coordinator Melani Provido said the SOA on cacao production is very timely as cacao production is given more focused interventions.
These include provision of quality cacao seedlings, solar dryers, and processing and fermentation facilities to sustain the region as the country’s leading cacao producer.
“We want to increase the productivity of cacao trees in the region from 700 grams to at least 2 kilos per tree per harvest,” she said.
She added that farmers that participated in the SOA are now active players in the cacao industry’s goal of addressing the Cacao 2020 Challenge, a campaign that aims to increase the country’s cacao production by planting at least 50 million cacao trees in the year 2020. It will also expand areas planted to cacao from the existing 12,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares, and take advantage for the increasing global demand for cacao beans.
Each SOA graduates will be receiving 50 cacao seedlings to be delivered on site where they can use either in establishing or expanding their cacao farms. Two hundred farmers also receive pruning sheers, while ten receive power sprayers during the raffle draw.
The SOA on GAP on cacao production was aired for one month (September to October) through DA’s Agri Pinoy radio program aired over DXRD-AM KHz 711 from 4 to 5 in the morning daily except on Sunday.