By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
I distinctly heard Agriculture Cordillera Director Lorenzo Caranguian say that there is no need to plant permanent trees to shade coffee because bananas could serve the purpose as well. He made the statement during the press conference on the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) implementation in Luzon Cluster A (CAR and Regions 1-3) held here November 14. That was his reaction when I pointed out that the optimistic projection that because of the support of the PRDP to coffee, Kalinga farmers would soon abandon corn and go back to coffee production was wishful thinking because the plantations converted to corn lands no longer have trees and coffee need shade to thrive. Governor Jocel Baac expressed his agreement with what I said telling the World Bank people that because of the reality, they should now move fast to “save the mountain and the coffee.” Caranguian claimed that he and another agriculture official present have tried the alternate coffee shading and that likewise, he has seen it done in Paracelis, Mtn. Province.
I checked with Philippine Information Agency Provincial Manager Peter Balocnit before sitting down to write if that was what the regional directed had said and he answered that that was the statement of Caranguian. I would also listen to the tape later and it backs up what Peter and I remember the statement to be.
Actually, there was no necessity to check against the tape or with another witness because it was not only once, but twice that Caranguian mentioned it. The following morning, while coffee farmer Froilan Albert was being interviewed by the PRDP Team Leader Frauke Jungbluth at the latter’s coffee farm in Patiking, Bagumbayan, Tabuk City, Albert mentioned in passing that one cannot grow coffee without trees to shade them. Seeing that Caranguian was around, I could not resist butting into the interview by asking Albert if bananas could not serve the purpose. He answered in the negative explaining that the leaves of bananas are too wide. Caranguian said that bananas will do if planted far apart.
I asked the opinion of Nambukayan coffee farmer Gabino Gunaban and Dupligan Farmers’ Multi-purpose Cooperative director Bernard Dulyungan who were also in the consultations between the World Bank and DA and the project proponents that morning, they both said that they have not seen anyone in Kalinga using bananas as coffee shade. Gunaban said that perhaps it could be done but then asked what would happen in the event a storm or a plague wipes out the bananas in the plantation. Personally, I was also thinking what would happen when the coffee outgrows the bananas. Coffee trees exceed the height of bananas.
The following evening when I ran into Provincial Agriculturist Domingo Bakilan, I asked him if he has seen bananas taking the place of trees as shade for coffee and he said that he has yet to see one in Kalinga but does not know if there are in Paracelis and other places.
As you may have instinctively concluded, I am skeptical about Caranguian’s solution to the absence of trees in the lands converted to corn lands specially so that others also expressed doubts about it. But if he believes in it, then there is nothing preventing him from spreading the practice to Kalinga specially in the barangays that would be served by the roads and the processing and marketing facilities to be provided by the World Bank. If through an experiment, it could be proven that bananas could take the place of trees as shade for coffee, I will eat my humble pie and even apologize to Caranguian for having doubted his authority about coffee growing in this part of the country.
I welcome being disproved by Caranguian because it means that there is no obstacle to the immediate return of corn farmers to coffee production once they decide to do so. Until then, however, I maintain that the suggestion of Caranguian, at the very least, is out of place in Kalinga. More so after Tabuk City Sanggunian Secretary Reynaldo Delgado told me that the director could be referring to the dwarf coffee variety the Nestle tried to introduce in barangay Bantay some years back which, according to him, could actually thrive without shade. If that’s the coffee variety the director is referring to, then he did not do his assignment because it did not click with local farmers. Delgado guesses that it’s because of its limited fruit-bearing capacity compared to the original varieties grown in Kalinga.**
