Commodity Sub Sector Study Coconut Industry

Author : Philip Jan Cerepak
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (14 download)

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Download or read book A Commodity History of Coconuts written by Philip Jan Cerepak and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation analyzes the significant role of coconut production in recent global history, focusing on copra - the dried meat of the nut - as a key factor in its economic force. It focuses on how the Philippines became the world's foremost site of commercial exploitation, significantly impacting the social and political make-up of the modern Philippines. Built around 6 chapters, this dissertation first traces how an indigenous technology, copra, transformed into a colonial commodity with a distinct infrastructure based on copra's extractive requirements. During this process of transformation, between 1900 - 1940, the copra-based infrastructure cut across regional boundaries to form the Coconut Zone, a manufactured environment for global vegetable oil production. While the built environment stretched across the Pacific Ocean, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, the Philippines became the worlds' leading producer of copra and coconut oil for global consumption producing approximately 70 percent of total global exports by the 1970s. Building on commodity studies, this dissertation details how actors - farmers, agricultural workers, bureaucrats, traders, elite-planters, and urban consumers - interacted with this infrastructure, and how this infrastructure had real life impacts on local actors. Throughout the post-WWII years, elite coconut planters and government-corporations responsible for the industry's development, were conscious of the colonial impact and focused their efforts toward nationalizing the industry. These efforts to nationalize the industry were restricted by the stratified commodity chain resulting in the class-bifurcated politics in Philippine society, particularly during the Marcos regime.