DAVAO CITY, March 5 — Hundreds of farmers in the Davao Region are expected to reap huge benefits from the planting and production of oil palm, a high-value crop that will soon be grown hand-in-hand with fresh bananas, cacao, coffee and rubber over the next several years.

“We just can’t ignore the advantages of planting oil palm over bananas because it’s so obvious from other farmers who have already started growing oil palm ahead of us,” said Rene Dalayon, president and chief executive officer of the Federation of Farmers’ Cooperatives of Davao (FEDCO) who is spearheading a group of banana growers and farmers who are also going into oil palm.

Dalayon said oil palm is easier to plant and maintain than growing bananas even in marshes, swamps and flood-prone areas where banana plants cannot survive.

“Oil palm plantations don’t need drainage systems unlike in banana farming. You don’t need to maintain the farm as much as you do with bananas,” he said.

Putting up a big oil palm plantation is like going into “massive reforestation” of denuded lands, especially hilly cogonal areas which were formerly virgin forests before the trees were cut down by illegal loggers, he added.

“This is the best way to reforest our denuded areas today -the massive planting of oil palm trees. While the palm fruit earns money for the farmer, the palm trees absorbs a lot of carbon dioxide and emits a lot of oxygen into the air, helping clean our environment,” said the recent national awardee of the Ernst and Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” global award.

Dalayon pointed out that farmers only plant the oil palm once and can harvest every 10 to 15 days for at least 30 years, unlike bananas where they have to cut down the whole trunk when harvesting one bunch of fresh bananas.

Although it takes 28 months before a farmer can harvest the fruits from an oil palm, the investments in an oil palm plantation can be fully recovered in about five years, according to Dalayon.

“Harvesting is easier and cheaper compared to other crops like coconuts, bananas, sugar. The oil palm nuts are bought by ready buyers, mostly oil mills, from Manila,” he said.

A highly-productive oil palm farmer with ten hectares can earn as much as P140,000 a month or P1.6 million a year net income.

Dalayon said palm oil nuts will be initially sold to Manila oil refineries for processing and refining into cooking oil and other products.

“We have plans later to build our own processing plants right here in Davao del Norte to process our own palm oil,” he said. [(PNA) LDV/AAP/ldp]