Goodbye Coconut Industry

By Antonio M. Reyes

Last month the Philippine Coconut Authority’s Provincial Manager Manuel Sembrano confirmed the arrival of the voracious coconut eating beetles called “Brontispa Longissima.” He said they were now feasting on the young coconut fronds in Barangay Pinaskuhan, Maasin City.
Despite this alarming development, the beetle’s arrival did not even merit an emergency meeting of the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council. It wasn’t even included in the agenda of the latest meeting of the Provincial Board.
Our disaster coordinating councils which have branches down to the barangay level apparently respond only to disasters like typhoons and landslides. While disasters like Climate Change which threatens to inundate our coastal areas and the “Bunchy Top” infestation which has almost decimated our abaca industry are not considered disasters because they are less dramatic and immediate.
The Philippine Coconut Authority and the provincial government had eight years to prepare for the beetle’s onslaught here. Yet the only weapon they have to combat it is a pesticide called “karate” which kills the pest - but poisons the tree as well. Whatever happened to the earwig insects the Department of Agriculture said it was propagating to fight the beetle with?
Several years ago the Agricultural Minister of Vietnam, which had solved the Brontispa problem, offered to send a team of experts here to help us. But Secretary Yap, for some strange reasons, declined the offer claiming they had the situation under control.
This is certainly no way to treat a tree that has provided us with food, shelter and livelihood for centuries. Its our number one agricultural export and millions of our countrymen depend on it for their livelihood.
If our local officials continue to down-play the Brontispa infestation, and are simply hoping it will fad away, they had better start preparing for its aftermath. For a recent United Nation’s survey has ranked Filipinos as the fifth “Hungriest People” on Earth. Let’s not make them hungrier by depriving them of their main source if income.
The Brontispa pestilence is a clear and present danger to Southern Leyte and we cannot just sit back and watch it destroy our coconut industry.
Lets join hands and save the “Tree of Life” not only from the voracious coconut eating beetle, but Secretary Yap’s even deadlier anti-dote; the “Karate” pesticide.

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