Reviving the Philippine wood industry with farm-grown trees: evidence from northern Mindanao

In many countries of South and South-east Asia trees planted on farms are becoming the most important source of wood. In the Philippines, increasingly larger volumes of the timber traded and consumed come from trees grown on small farms in the sloping uplands. For more than a decade, small-scale farmers in northern Mindanao have been generating a significant marketable surplus of fast-growing timber trees, and viable farm forestry industries have emerged in the region as a result. However, the Philippine government has not duly acknowledged yet the importance of timber production by smallholder farmers and their contribution to sustain the wood industry. Existing policy disincentives constrain the establishment of tree farms and commercialisation of farm-grown timber. This paper has two objectives: first, to describe how timber produced by farmers is reaching the market, the structure of this market and the end uses of farm-grown timber in the province of Misamis Oriental, northern Mindanao; secondly, to estimate the importance of timber production by smallholders and explore its potential to sustain the wood industry. The study was conducted among wood processing plants located in Cagayan de Oro City and its neighbouring municipalities. Although in the past years the forestry sector output has been declining due to depletion of forest resources, the forest- and wood-based industry is the second most important industry sector in the region. Nowadays, there are in northern Mindanao 135 active small-scale sawmills (SSS) exclusively supplied with farm-grown timber. These have an estimated log utilization potential of 111,064 m3 yr-1 and a sawn timber production potential of 76,596 m3 yr-1. Planted trees also represent a large percentage of the national and international production and trade of tropical timber in the country. Forestry statistics indicate that in 1999 up to 70% (500,000 m3) of the country log production came from planted trees. This study provides evidence that most probably a large share of this timber is produced on-farm. This demonstrates that smallholder farmers can produce large quantities of timber and efficiently supply local and national markets. The Philippine government and the wood industry sector should recognize the role of smallholder farmers as land managers and efficient producers of many important agricultural commodities, including timber.

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