Small Mindanao banana players boost up

SMALL banana farmers all over Mindanao growing all kinds of bananas like cavendish, cardaba, lakatan, binangay, etc. are set to band together as one “industry cluster” to avoid being cheated by low buying prices of traders, consolidators, and multinational exporters.Ireneo Dalayon, chief executive officer of the Federation of Banana Cooperatives in Mindanao (Fedco), said the time has come for all small banana farmers in Mindanao to unite as “one strong industry cluster” and get the courage to start dictating their own banana prices instead of being shortchanged all the time by the industry’s big players.

Dalayon is one of the participants of the Davao Industry Cluster Capacity Enhancement Program (Diccep) jointly undertaken this year by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) and the region’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

Banana Cluster session

The program was designed to boost the productivity of various Davao industries like banana industry, mango industry, seaweed industry, as well as wood, mining, tourism, and information technology industries.

As head of Mindanao’s biggest federation of banana coops now supplying the fruit to multinational firm Unifruitti, Dalayon is now urging all banana farmers in this southern island producing all kinds of bananas, to join the newly formed group called the Mindanao Banana Growers and Exporters Association (MBGEA).

This new organization will be the farmer’s counterpart to the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA), which is run ironically by foreigners and multinationals — Dole, Del Monte, United Fruit, Sumitomo who are the big players in the banana industry, according to Dalayon.

“This is the only way we can fight back as banana farmers to get better prices for our fruit,” said Dalayon who also runs his own small cavendish banana farm.
As a well-organized group, we’ll have the bargaining power to dictate our own prices to all buyers of bananas.”

Fedco for many years had been supplying fresh cavendish bananas to Dole Stanfilco which packs the fruit under the “Dole” label. Last year, the federation junked the supply deal with Dole at renewal time and switched to a new, better pricing deal with Unifrutti which packs the fruit under the “United Fruit” label, according to lawyer Koronado Apuzen, chairman of Farmcoop, management arm of Fedco.

 

 

 

 

 

Aurelio Peña, Contributor

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Tags: Banana, Banana industry Cluster, Davao, DICCEP, dti xi, FEDCO, industry clusters, JICA, Mindanao

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