Words and Pictures by Dionisia Tabureguci
AFTER being pushed to the edge of oblivion and almost falling over, Fiji’s coconut industry is ready for a comeback.
And those who are moulding the cast for this revival are doing so with big plans in mind, a sympathetic ear for critics but with a forceful resolve that the industry, far from being a sunset one, is on its way to a brighter future.
The steam that is left, it seems, is about new opportunities, a total makeover by shifting the focus to propel the industry away from traditional copra production to one where coconut farmers are involved in value added products, more specifically health foods and cosmetics.
The outfit behind this revival is the industry regulator CIDA (Coconut Industry Development Authority), an entity set up in 1998 to regulate and bring back to life what by then had become a faded economic icon.
CIDA’s chief executive officer John Teiwa, not often one to call for media attention upon the affairs of the entity, was nevertheless a little more accommodative when approached by Fiji Business to discuss the direction, if there was such a thing, of Fiji’s coconut industry.
A week before the approach, Fiji Business had been told by former politician and long time coconut planter Leo Smith, that the coco-peat factory project mooted by him and endorsed by CIDA late last year had been shelved “for reasons that are not clear to us”.
JOHN TEIWA...industry plans to be more than just copraSmith had called for CIDA to get off what he called “its civil service mentality” and start doing something about the industry. For if nothing was done quickly, he feared for the survival of what had once been the cornerstone of the economy and the hundreds of small farmers in the outer islands who send their children to school from copra money.
Having been in the coconut business ever since he was a child, Smith was familiar and still experiences first hand the gradual decline of the coconut industry. He had raised his concern to this magazine over decision made by a growing number of plantation owners in Vanua Levu to either diversify into other crops or worse, subdivide their properties and sell them off.
Vanua Levu supplies most of the country’s copra and also hosts the milling factory. Chances were, said Smith, the new owners “don’t give a damn about coconuts”.
What followed was a significant drop in production when the trees are cut down to make way for property development.
“It’s a sunset industry if nothing is done about it,” Smith predicted.
His prognosis on this dim future is based on his argument that CIDA is not doing enough or moving fast enough to turn anything around. He himself had been a victim of this ‘inaction’ when he took his proposal to CIDA for a Fiji-first coco peat factory. Based on a “whole nut” philosophy, the plan required that CIDA gather whole nuts from farmers for 10 cents or 15 cents a nut, sell the husks to Smith and his Australian/Sri Lankan partners (coconut peat is a form of organic fertilizer derived from coconut husk fibre), then re-sell the nuts for both domestic consumption and copra production.
“After a series of meetings with them (CIDA), we are still waiting from them to get back to us on the proposal,” Smith said.
But seen against the laid out plans of CIDA, Smith’s proposal may be honourable and logical but not up to the mathematics of the regulatory authority.
Teiwa argues that Smith’s plan “just won’t work” because of the logistic and financial constraints that CIDA already faces and will face when gathering coconuts simply to sell back to Smith and his outfit for two cents a nut.
It would heavily tax an entity already burdened by lack of funds and resources. But that is not to say that nothing has been done, Teiwa argues.
At CIDA’s estimate that some 100,000 people - mostly in the rural areas - still depend on income derived from the copra industry, it would be unfair to say that nothing has been done.
A more reasonable way of looking at the coconut industry would be to look at the challenges pitched against it, which makes any effort to advance its interest equivalent to moving about in a pool of glue.
At field level according to CIDA, the greatest threat is the depleting coconut plantation as real estate booms in Vanua Levu, making it more attractive for plantation owners to sell a piece of land rather than do something about the coconuts. When in the 1950s coconut was a thriving industry capable of producing over 40,000 tonnes of copra a year, estate owners were responsible for the production of up to 60 percent of that figure, Teiwa points out.
Now, we are lucky if we can do 20,000 tonnes a year and in fact, after Cyclone Ami in 2003, CIDA’s Copra Millers of Fiji (sole producer of copra and coconut oil, the two main coconut products in Fiji) recorded a depressed output of just 9000 tonnes of copra at the end of that year.
Out of the figures of production nowadays, smallholder farmers are the ones who are producing the most.
Another weighty challenge was the lack of coordination between Fiji’s Agriculture ministry and CIDA, which made it difficult to ascertain the number of coconut trees there were on the ground, their age, their per-tree-production and whether the owners were serious about planting coconut for commercial purposes. And if they were, did they follow proper crop husbandry practices.
This challenge was partly overcome last year when all coconut related matters handled by the ministry were officially handed over to CIDA.
CIDA is now in the process of putting in place two enabling arms to help charter its course – a farm extension division to gather all relevant field information and a research and development arm to help realise the new goals that have been set in regards to developing value added products.
At field level therefore, CIDA’s retraced steps into the coconut groves now involves the careful documentation of farmers, the type of planting that they do, the areas taken up by coconut palms as well as a comprehensive replanting programme to supply seed-nuts to these farms.
Another infamous challenge faced by this industry is the decline in the prices of copra and coconut oil, an adversity now worsened by the rise in freight costs brought on by the global fuel price hike. Needless to say, this has lent credence to critics who call copra production a “sunset industry” on account of farmers moving away from it due to low returns.
Rearing nut seeds at Wainigata in Vanua Levu...THIS PHOTO WAS SUPPLIED BY CIDA.To CIDA however, the industry is a long way away from its last breath. While copra may not be the most attractive commodity right now but there is a plan, which, in its entirety, is to shift away from that very notion that coconut planting in Fiji is all about producing copra and coconut oil.
“The industry is getting nowhere agriculturally but we do have a vision, although it will take a while to achieve it,” says Teiwa with firm resolve. “Our vision is to reinstate the coconut industry as one big business in the country and I can assure you that we will all live long enough to see the fruit of that vision.”
This optimism has its roots in the entity’s grand design. First, the CIDA of 2005 is really a reformed entity, quite unlike its 1998 self in terms of size, structure and defined goals. Second and more importantly, global development in coconut based commodities have already made a u-turn into newer products like virgin coconut oil and coconut timber and these are two commodities that a greater part of CIDA’s plan now revolve around.
Virgin coconut oil, in particular, is something of a fetish for health food lovers in more developed countries and CIDA hopes to construct a comprehensive infrastructure in place to link itself and its registered coconut farmers in time for both to ride on the bandwagon of this development and reap similar benefits that countries like Philippines and Sri Lanka are already gaining from this craze. Virgin coconut oil, sold at retail for about A$12 per 300 grams bottle, has also been put forward by some authorities as a natural wonder-drug, with a wide range of capabilities that include the prevention of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and skin protection among a host of others.
This, says Teiwa, makes virgin oil an attractive alternative right now and should be reason enough for farmers to want to get back into coconut planting.
For those that do, CIDA aims to equip them with portable virgin coconut oil mills so that they produce the oil without having to go far. “The farmers will husk the coconuts and they will end up having access to water, husk and shell. Copra Millers will eventually have no copra (its fate is yet to be decided) and CIDA will instead go to these small mills and take all the shells, water, oil and husks and then we will do the downstream processing with them and our own marketing.” Teiwa explains.
“In the end, we want to change copra trading into whole nut trading where people will talk about the industry in terms of whole nuts. Once we have the small mills established, it would then be the right time for people like Leo Smith and the kind of venture that he is proposing, to come in because the infrastructure would have been in place already. Right now, it is premature and too costly.”
LEO SMITH...sought CIDA help in establishing a coco peat factory---
NOTE: This article was published in the Fiji Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as Cover Story. COVER title: Coconut Revival? CIDA takes industry to new level; Cover article title: PUTTING LIFE BACK INTO COCONUTS. CIDA has big plans to revive the industry; 3-5, July 2006 edition.
Fiji Business is a publication in the Islands Business International portfolio and sold only in the Fiji islands as an accompaniment to Islands Business Magazine
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