Success Stories

Western Mindanao | Basilan | Palawan

Western Mindanao
In western Mindanao, the SUCCESS Alliance Philippines project conducted a series of training-of-trainers (TOT) workshops in October 2003 and decided to partner with local stakeholders’ in order to increase the project’s impact on smallholder cacao farmers. The project also recognized the benefit of cacao farming for alleviating the negative environmental impact of logging in the region’s rural communities. During October 2003, heavy rains affected both urban and rural communities in Zamboanga City and neighboring municipalities, especially those in the low-lying areas and riverbanks. Most communities attributed the serious erosion and land deterioration problems to the massive cutting of trees in the area’s forest.

After learning of the SUCCESS Alliance TOT initiative, City Agriculturist Diosdado Palacat, who heads the Zamboanga City Agriculture Office, participated in the workshop series and learned about the project’s goals to provide additional income to farmers while discouraging rural communities from further exploiting the already heavily logged forests. The agriculture office produces organic fertilizers from market wastes as part of Zamboanga City’s integrated waste management program, and at the TOT workshop’s close, Palacat, on behalf of the City Agriculture Office, committed to provide one sack of organic fertilizer to every cacao farmer who would participate in the SUCCESS Alliance farmer field school program. In a memorandum of agreement signed between CocoaPhil and the Zamboanga City Agriculture Office, the city committed itself to planting 30,000 cacao seeds and establishing 4 clonal cacao gardens and nurseries in the rural areas. Meanwhile, farmer associations in Isabela City, in Basilan, also committed to establishing two cacao nurseries for the hands-on farmer field school training for cacao crop production.

Basilan
The Santa Clara Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Development Cooperative Inc. (SCARBDCI) joined the SUCCESS Alliance project in March 2004. SCARBDCI holds an agricultural estate of 4,018 hectares, which was formerly owned and operated by the University of the Philippines National Development Corporation. The property has been distributed to 1,321 member beneficiaries under a land grant agreement under the Philippine Agrarian Reform Law.

SCARBDCI management saw the potential for growing cacao as an additional income source for its members and offered to develop 1,500 hectares for cacao production. By the end of the project, SCARBDCI had established 18 hectares with 1,000 grafted cacao seedlings per hectare. These areas serve also as a source of scions to facilitate seedling production for expanding cacao-growing elsewhere.
  
Palawan
Puerto Princesa City has a total of 20 training-of-trainer (TOT) graduates, consisting of 18 agriculturists working for the City Agriculture Office and 2 farmer leaders. The TOT graduates aid the SUCCESS Alliance project by providing extension services that help the farmers such as conducting farmer field school, establishing cacao farms and producing planting materials.

The SUCCESS Alliance project trained a total of 665 farmers in 16 barangays, or communities, in Puerto Princesa City. These farmers participated in the SUCCESS Alliance training because they were interested expanding their existing farms by adding cacao crops. The majority of these farmers now intercrop cacao with existing coconut trees, root crops such as cassava, and fruit trees such as papaya, mango, calamansi and banana. Cacao seedlings were produced in the city nursery and in the five barangay-based nurseries. Budwood gardens were established in six sites from the initial grafted seedlings of BR-25, UIT-1, ICS-40, K-1 and K-2 varieties sourced from the University of Southern Mindanao. 

Cacao demonstration plots were also established in selected areas to serve as examples to farmers on the various aspects of cacao production. The plots act as excellent illustrations for farmers to see how advantageous intercropping cacao is with coconut trees and other crops.