“Albay Gov. Joey Sarte Salceda said the Legazpi Oil copra crushing plant’s reopening assures a huge boost to coconut farmers’ incomes in Albay and the Bicol region, coming as it does just when coconut trees are starting to recover from the destructive impact of the 2006 typhoons (Milenyo and Reming).”
(Source: LegOil reopening to boost Albay coconut farmers’ income. Philippine Star. Last Updated September 07, 2009)
Exposing coconut meat under the sun is the simplest way to create copra. But with the unpredictable weather change in Albay, drying up this meat can also be easily done. Just with a piece of spiky wood, yero (pieces of metal), chopped bamboos, trunks of banana trees, a small dump of coconuts, a small pit, and match sticks, one can have 4 sacks of copra in less than 4 days.
A family in Tabaco City was busy preparing to produce copra. It just happened when I arrived at their house that they were removing husks using a spiky wood, breaking each coconut shell into half and carefully placing them on the floor of bamboo. A pit was already excavated, 8 ft x 4 wide and 3 1/2 ft deep.
Trunks of banana were needed to prevent the coconuts from moving away the bamboo floor.
A small opening of the pit was made in order to slide through the coconut husks. Before setting those husks on fire, a yero should be placed over the coconut shells to keep the heat to stay longer.
“Masmagayun an arog ka ining proseso ta kontrolado an init. Dagdagan mo na lang kan bunot o kahoy kung pawara na ang sulo ngani durudiretsong maluto.” (It is better to use this method because the heat can be easily controlled. Just add more husks or wood if the fire is going to fade in order to sustain constant drying up of the meat.)
“Maaraman mo na luto na pag nagkolor-gray o nagbrown-brown na ang laman. Madali ng mahulkas sa bagul o nahahale na sanang kusa.” (You’ll know that it is cooked already if the meat turned gray or slightly brown. It can be easily removed from the shell manually or it can let itself off.)
The process of drying coco meat would take 11-15 hours per day up to 3 days if good weather prevails. However, if the sky drizzles, pieces of wide metal as a roof would be highly reliable.
After the meat has become dry (now called copra), it can be collated in sacks. “Aabutun yan mga 4 na sako tapos ipabakal mi na sa centro, P8-12 kada kilo.” (It would reach 4 sacks of copra then we can sell those in central city, P17 per kilo.) If you do the math, the family would have P3,740, reasonable enough to help provide their everyday basic needs.
All comments are moderated. Your comments will not appear here unless approved by the blog owner. Thank you.
Your interviewer said 8 - 12 pesos per kilo. But your translation says 17 pesos. (Or was that just a typo?) With 4 sacks, having an average of 45-50 kilos per sack, that would amount to 1,800 - 2,000 pesos. Also, it would depend on the quality, the moisture content would play a big role in the trading. Here in our town, traders subtract an average of 1-2 kilos per sack if the quality is good. But, of course, I think Albay copra has better quality.
Anyway, just passing through.
Posted by Najo at March 18, 2010, 11:37 am