The coconut industry is an important sector of agriculture in the Philippines. With 69 out of 82 provinces in the country producing coconut, the industry has a total production area of 3.62 million hectares and provides an estimate of 2.5 million farmers with employment. Moreover, the Philippines has over 347 million fruit-bearing trees and a total production (mt) of 14.7 million (nut terms) in 2018. As of 2015, domestic consumption of coconut in copra terms was 0.835 million metric tons (Philippine Coconut Authority, 2018). The Philippines also remains to be the second-largest producer of coconut among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), wherein it comprises almost 40% of ASEAN’s total coconut production (FAOStat, 2018).
Major producers of coconut in the Philippines include the regions of CALABARZON, Zamboanga Peninsula, Davao, and Northern Mindanao. Being referred to as the “tree of
life” due to its wide array of uses, coconut is mainly exported as products like virgin coconut oil (VCO) and desiccated coconut.
BJM will focus on exporting the Coconut Frozen Meat, Sweetened Coconut Meat, Dried Coconut meat, Coconut Water and Charcoal.
