DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/05 January) — Some 12,513 coconut trees toppled by Typhoon Pablo in 2012 were processed into lumber and distributed to households in Davao Oriental, Davao del Norte, and Compostela Valley , Remelyn Recoter, OIC regional executive director of the a Department of Agriculture (DA) reported.
According to their 2013 intervention report on Pablo, the super typhoon that struck these areas on December 4, 2012, the lumber amounted to around 2 million board feet and was distributed to 3,430 households in the typhoon-devastated provinces, Recoter said, adding the conversion into lumber was among the department’s interventions for the Pablo-affected areas.
The report said the coconut industry suffered around 66.42% damage, affecting 70,096 hectares of the provinces’ 105,527 hectares planted to coconut.
Coconuts were the hardest hit in terms of land area but the coconut industry was not the hardest hit in terms of damaged areas, the report showed.
The banana, vegetable, abaca, and cacao industries were worse off, each posting more than 80% in damaged production areas.
The vegetable industry suffered the most, in terms of area damage, at 86.92% of total hectares damaged followed by abaca (85.41% ) or a total of 5,188 out of 6,074 hectares.
Damage to the banana industry in the region was placed at 82.82%, or 24,701 out of a total of 29,824 hectares.
Recoter said losses in the agriculture and fisheries sector in the provinces amounted to around P30.5 billion.
Compostela Valley province suffered most of the damage, at P13.6 billion or around 45% of the damage suffered by the three provinces in the region.
Davao Oriental, meanwhile, suffered P10.7 billion in damage, and Davao del Norte, P6.3 billion.
Total damage to livestock and poultry amounted to P306 million while damage to the fisheries sector amounted to P761 million. (MindaNews)