Agriculture.ph Blog

Some 50,000 cardaba farmers are needed to sustain the export growth of banana chips and banana fries in the Philippines, according to a report by the Growth Equity in Mindanao (GEM), a project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

The GEM report said thousands of small cardaba farmers in Mindanao depend on banana chips processors and exporters as the primary market for their cardaba bananas which are used as raw material to produce banana chips as well as frozen cardaba, a new snack product pioneered in this bustling southern city.

Frozen cardaba banana which can be cooked as fried banana or “turon”, a favorite snack of Filipinos here and abroad, were shipped to Saudi Arabia last year and the US market this year as trial shipments, targeting large Filipino communities overseas.

“It’s stirring up a huge demand for our new banana product in many Filipino communities out there. Pinoys, you see, loved this kind of snacks that they missed so much back home,” says Ferdinand Maranon, president of Sagrex Foods, Inc. which pioneered and developed this new kind of snack product using cardaba bananas.

The Davao-based firm has a processing plant in Toril district here that has a daily production capacity of 20,000 kilos a day to cope with the fast-rising export orders for frozen cardaba from foreign buyers in the US, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

Banana chips, however, remains the primary product made from cardaba bananas, emerging today as one of Mindanao’s strategic industries, racking up yearly exports of 35 million US dollars, according to GEM.

More than 20 banana chips processing plants operating in Mindanao get their raw cardaba bananas from thousands of small farmers in this southern island, with cardaba farms located in Davao del Sur, North Cotabato, Lanao del Sur, Davao Province and Compostela Valley.

Most cardaba farmers in these areas, however, have small farms with an average size of only one hectare or less. Faced with the industry requirements of at least 30,000 hectares, GEM technicians figured out that around 30,000 to 50,000 farmers may be needed to plant cardaba to sustain the growth of the Philippine banana chips industry.

Sagrex Foods’ supply of raw cardaba bananas come from the firm’s own contract growers who produce cardaba in a 300-hectare area in Davao which will be doubled later to 600 hectares by next year. The firm is growing the “giant cardaba” variety with 16 to 18 hands, a much bigger quantity than the native variety with only six to seven hands, according to Maranon.

Limited supply of cardaba bananas however, has continued to cripple the operations of banana chips processors and exporters in the Philippines south. A number of exporters have already turned down exports orders from foreign buyers because of lack of cardaba bananas to process into banana chips, according to Ruben See, president of See’s Food Manufacturing, one of the country’s biggest banana chips exporter.

“We’re still hampered by the lack of cardaba bananas. We can’t fill more orders from our overseas buyers if we lack enough raw materials to produce more banana chips,” says See, who runs two processing plants, one in Bulacan and the other in Davao.

Trade Undersecretary Merly Cruz expressed hope that more and more farmers in the South will go into cardaba growing in large commercial scale to meet the rising demand of the country’s banana chips industry.

“There’s a fast-growing market demand for banana chips and frozen cardaba from global markets like China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and the US. The potential is big–we should take advantage of this opportunity. We have various government programs in place to help and support cardaba farmers, processors and exporters to meet this global demand,” Cruz said.

Source: www.balita.ph