Crop Diversification in the Asia-Pacific region - United Nations in ...

In coconut, diversification means the simultaneous growing of one or more crops in acoconut area. Cash crops or permanent crops can be grown depending on a number offactors. These are the environment (soil, topography, and climate), socio-economic (tenureand capital) and technical (available technology and management requirements) factors thatcould either be within or beyond the control of the farmers (PCARRD, 1993). Furthermore,eight important considerations have been identified in intercropping coconut. These are:amenability of coconut farms to intercropping, available market, favourable climate, suitablesoil conditions, favourable slope of the land, farmers’ resources and attitudes, technical andworking arrangements, and availability of good planting materials.A wide range of crops can be grown under coconut. Permanent crops like coffee,cacao, abaca, lanzones and other fruit trees can be established. Cash crops, on the otherhand, include corn, peanut, sweet potato, pineapple, banana, mungbean, arrowroot, ramie andvegetables, among others.As stated earlier, one or more permanent and cash crops can be grown under coconut.When a combination of crops of varying heights, rooting system, and canopy patterns tomaximize utilization of sunlight, soil nutrients, and moisture is grown, this is referred to as amulti-storey cropping pattern. This pattern consists of three levels, namely, coconut as thetop floor, perennials as the mid-storey crops and low-growing annuals as the ground floorcrops. Aside from the multi-storey cropping system, Felizardo (1988) reported that livestockand poultry are grown under coconut in a number of provinces in the country.The suitability of the above-mentioned crops as intercrops has been extensivelystudied. The climatic and soil requirements of most intercrops have been determined. Thereare a number of technoguides, brochures, manuals and pamphlets that detail crop varieties tobe used, cultural management practices and post-harvest and storage operations. In mostcases, the profitability of intercropping with coconut is included in these publications.3.3 Successful Crop Diversification PatternsTable 8 presents the documented successful crop diversification practices in thePhilippines. According to Adriano (1989), garlic production exceeded that of irrigated ricein the Ilocos region. Likewise, onion production was very profitable in the Central LuzonRegion. Similar results were reported by Gonzales in 1989; in Ilocos and Central Luzonregions, the highest profit was obtained from onion, peanut and garlic.As intercrops of coconut, passion fruit, banana, pineapple, and cacao have beendocumented to give high net returns. Research using black pepper + papaya/cacao +pineapple under 17-year old coconut conducted in Davao Research Centre produced a netprofit of PHP 8,234 per hectare per cropping as against PHP 2,494 from coconut alone.4. CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES AND PROSPECTS OF CROPDIVERSIFICATIONMoya and Miranda (1989) discussed the technical, social and institutional issues indiversifying rice areas. Technical issues include the intricate and differential relationshipsamong edaphic, climatic, hydrologic, biotic and agronomic properties of the flooded riceenvironment and dryland non-rice production systems. Socio-economic issues are hinged on99