While coconut is one of the two agricultural commodities that earns the country more than a billion dollars in export revenues every year, its vast potential to earn even more has never been tapped because of numerous issues bugging the industry.

The area currently planted to coconut is about 3.565 million hectares or 26 percent of country’s total agricultural lands. Also, 68 out of 81 provinces are coconut-growing areas. At present, these lands host about 339 million bearing coconut trees and 3.4 million farmers who, ironically, live mostly below the poverty line even as coconut exports reached $2.0 billion in 2016.

You can read the whole article here: http://www.manilatimes.net/state-ph-coconut-industry-must-done/346624/