Agriculture Business Week

He is a busy operator of a technical education institution with 12 branches in Metro Manila and in the provinces. You would think he has no time for farming but because he grew up in a farm, he could not help but do his own brand of farming, and not just hobby farming at that.

The fellow is Constancio Sia, a 77 year-old native of Valencia, Negros Oriental. A certified public accountant, he worked for five years in a well known accounting firm before he went on his own to start Asian College of Science and Technology which offered at first vocational courses. Today the school offers IT, electronics and nursing courses.

In 2001, after gracing so many sessions of the Agri-Kapihan, and attending seminars and agricultural trade shows like Agrilink, he decided to develop a five-hectare property near the poblacion of his hometown which he bought for P2 per square meter from a retired parish priest in 1960. Now the going price for an undeveloped property in the area is P1,500 per square meter but he would not sell his property at that price now because it is already full of bearing exotic fruit trees.

One exotic fruit tree that he has planted in a big way is longkong, the superior variety of lanzones from Thailand. He has planted no less than 1,300 grafted longkong trees, a good number of which have started fruiting last year. He did not have to transport his harvest to distant markets because everything is sold right in Valencia and Dumaguete City.

He was able to sell his longkong fruits at P150 per kilo whereas the ordinary lanzones in the province was selling at only P30 to P40 per kilo. At first, a trader told Constancio that the price of his longkong was too high. However, after tasting the sweet fruits, he was convinced the price was not high at all for that kind of quality. In fact, the trader offered to buy all his future longkong harvests.

Durian is another fruit tree that Constancio has also planted in a big way. He has planted no less than 250 trees of the imported varieties. The trees have also begun to bear fruit commercially. He sells his harvests right in Dumaguete and other towns in the province. Most of the fruits are shelled and packed in styropor containers. He sells his shelled durian at P180 per pack of one kilo.

His rambutan of the varieties R162 and Queen Sirikit are also very fruitful in Valencia. He has planted over one hundred trees from which he harvested about three tons earlier this year which he sold at P40 per kilo ex-farm.

Another exotic fruit tree that he has planted is mangosteen. He has planted so far over a hundred seedlings. They are not yet of fruiting age, however.

Constancio, of course, is not only interested in fruit trees. He is also interested in growing vegetables and other crops. In fact, several years back, he had asked Harbest Agribusiness Corporation to set up a demo farm and vegetable production training center. He was also successful in getting TESDA’s financial support to pay for the training of farmer-scholars at the demo farm. The training was season-long and the farmers were given stipends of P500 a month. No less than 300 farmers were trained in the two years that the program was carried out. And many of the trainees are now growing high-value crops on their own.

Constancio is also interested in organic farming and has started his own vermiculture project to produce vermicast and vermicompost. He now produces about 50 sacks of vermicompost everyday. He does not only use his vermicompost in his farm, the local government units in the province are also ordering from him. He feeds his earthworms with shredded grasses and chicken manure to produce organic fertilizer.

Oh yes, he is also into native chickens. He has now a flock of over a thousand but he is expanding because there is a new market that he is targeting. One big supermarket chain is putting up a branch in Dumaguete City. The purchasing manager has talked with him and would like to have a weekly supply of at least 100 native chickens.

He says he feeds his native chickens mostly with fermented coconut residue (sapal) from a local virgin coconut oil factory in Valencia which he helped set up, and azolla which he grows in small ponds in his farm. The duckweed which multiplies fast in the water, he said, is relished by his chickens.

The supermarket will also need high-value vegetables and sweet corn. And this could be met not only by his own production but also those of the farmers who have trained in his vegetable training school set up by Harbest Agribusiness.

Constancio has visited Helen’s Farm in Davao where Andry Lim practices natural farming. He is very much impressed by the pig project of Andry Lim which uses the so-called no-wash pig production system. The pigs are raised not on cement flooring but on a one-meter deep bed of coconut coir dust and other materials. The pigs are fed with concentrate feeds only once a day plus forage greens. To eliminate odor, a concoction of beneficial microorganisms is sprayed on the pigs and on the bedding.

Constancio has invited Andry Lim and wife Jojie to conduct a seminar on natural farming in Valencia. He plans to grow naturally-farmed pigs also to be supplied to the big supermarket branch that will open in Dumaguete very soon. He is expanding production in another farm in Valencia with an area of four hectares.

At 77, Constancio does not look his age. He has maintained a well balanced lifestyle that keeps him trim and sprightly. That could be attributed partly to his farming which he says he enjoys very much.

By Zac B. Sarian