Agriculture Business Week

Despite a failing coconut output, a costly fertilizer program and an invasive pest, PCA Administrator Oscar Garin is confident that people in the coconut industry can squarely hurdle all problems.

Things are far from rosy in the coconut industry this year. Recent newspaper reports describe the sector as imperiled, tense and troubled. This heebie-jeebies state has recently been confirmed by administrator Oscar Garin of the Philippine Coconut Authority in a recent press conference attended by agri-journalists. In the said meeting, Garin reveals that the country’s coconut output is seen to fall by 12%. Last year’s coconut output was recorded at 2.47 MT, while this year’s output is projected at 2.17 MT.

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Posted on August 31st, 2008 under Other Crops. Tags: Coconut. Comments: None

Agri-financing experts seem to hammer a strong message to farmers: be market-driven and get organized.

For ordinary small farmers, the term “agri-financing” is a complex subject. It uses arcane language like collaterals, asset base, capital build-up and loan maturity. It deals with numbers and mathematical calculations. Moreover, it requires a lot of documents and paper work. But as early as the ‘6os, members of government and private sector were already telling the farmers to develop entrepreneurial minds, to think like businessmen, to understand even just basic bookkeeping.

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Posted on August 31st, 2008 under SPOTlight. Tags: Agri-Financing. Comments: None

Do these big birds augur well in Philippine business? A German farm manager says it can - but some rules have to be followed.

Albeit there’s been a mounting demand for ostriches in the international market, the Philippines doesn’t seem to consider such a presage for business opportunity. A Nueva Ecija-based ostrich farm, for one, says that in order to meet the demands abroad, all ostrich growers in the country should have to work at one fell swoop.

Michael Gross, farm manager and owner of the Gross Ostrich Farm, one of the largest ostrich cultivators in the Philippines, concedes that his yield is pretty small to export ostrich livestock and products. And although there are some entrepreneurs and consumers abroad who want to acquire his livestock and products, he just shrugs off his shoulders and says: “Maybe one day we can export.”

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Posted on August 29th, 2008 under Poultry. Tags: Ostrich. Comments: 2

A Filipino wine connoisseur. elevates the local coconut lambanog into world-class vodka.
 
For Rich Cabael, president of VuQo, the quality of wine depends entirely on the quality of fruit used. This will be its bread and butter, body and spirit.

“VuQo, the first Philippine-made vodka extracted from coconut, is a premium vodka that’s basically a multipurpose product,” he said, “It’s an elevated form of lambanog. It took a lot of refinement to accomplish-40% alcohol and packaged in a very elegant bottle. We call it VuQo. As you can see, the name itself is creative.”

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Posted on August 29th, 2008 under Entrepreneurs, Fruits. Tags: Wine. Comments: None

There’s another kind of rice that’s starting to create waves in urban markets and farmers from the North and South are cashing in on the bandwagon.

Legends tell of ancient grains exclusively served on tables of royalty. Today, these grains are known as heirloom rice in the United States and other parts of the world. Most heirloom rice production is in remote parts of Asia, including Bhutan, Bengal, and the mountain regions of the Philippines. Here, they are simply called, red rice.

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Posted on August 27th, 2008 under Organic, Rice. Comments: 1

The success of a good harvest starts from good seeds and every farmer needs to know the proper way of storing them.

Seed is the most valuable able input for anyone who is into farming. Failure of the seeds to germinate would mean additional production cost, not to mention delay in farm operations. It is therefore important to make sure that seed for planting have high germination percentage. But how can one be ascertained of the quality of the seeds or that the seeds still have high germination percentage? Here are timely tips for those who are interested in farming or gardening.

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Posted on August 27th, 2008 under Fruits, Herbal Plants, Vegetables. Tags: Seeds. Comments: None

A friend of mine who is an erudite and astute agriculturist lamented that issues besetting the agri-horizon are still the same as when he was still at UPLB many decades ago.

And whenever we have a discussion on the state of agri in our country, we both agree that the major factor of success is the “affordability” level of farmer’s expenditures as related to the world outside the farm gate.

Stereotyping of farmers in various state or condition to me is a result of the “non-affordability” factor on the farmer side. Statements like “farmers are poor because they are lazy or they choose to go to a cockfight and gamble rather than attend to farming needs, etc.” abound when discussing the present state of farming. The “poor” or “small” adjectives are used when putting an image of the Filipino farmer.

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Posted on August 26th, 2008 under Special Report. Tags: Farmers. Comments: None

Chemically, water is the combination of hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O); these are joined in the ratio of 2 hydrogen atoms to 1 oxygen (as H20). It is the most abundant chemical substance, and it performs endless functions whether it’s in the form of liquid, solid or gas.

Water is vital to nutrition. It is the solvent wherein the metabolic reactions of the body take place. It carries the nutrients which are subjected to cellular metabolism, and the waste products of metabolism. It also serves to disperse the heat generated by the metabolic reactions. In many of the metabolic reactions water is either added or subtracted. Subtracted water is termed metabolic water, while the addition of water is termed hydrolysis.

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Posted on August 25th, 2008 under Livestock. Tags: Water. Comments: None

Dr. Evelina Tablan, naturepath doctor from San Francisco, California who promotes the use of coconut sugar among other organic foods shared in a press conference the benefits of coco sugar.

Dr. Tablan mentioned the three cases of patients with prostate problems. For two weeks, the patients took 1 tbsp of coco sugar three times a day. Later tests revealed that the reading went down from 14 to 2. She also said the coco sugar will soon be used as substitute for Viagra becaus of the high glutamic acid content.

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Posted on August 25th, 2008 under Other Crops. Tags: Coconut, Sugar. Comments: None