Agriculture Business Week

Here’s another unique business idea to help you earn more!

It is important to familiarize ourselves with the common chemical ingredients used in soap-making. These ingredients give the desired quality and feature of the soap. Also, the quantity of these ingredients in making soap, dictates the cost of soap produced.
1. Coco Diethanol Amide (CDEA) – foam or sud booster
2. Sodium silicate – hardening and leavening agent; prevents separation or deterioration of ingredients in liquid products
3. Sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES) – cleansing agent; for thickening effect and a cheaper but effective foamer

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The Animal Products Development Center (APDC), a section of the Research Division of the Bureau of Animal Industry, is a most helpful government agency, if you ask entrepreneurs like Rene Almeda of Alaminos Goat Farm (AGF).

Almeda is most impressed by the professionalism and the dedication of the people running the agency. Of course, he is very thankful for the help APDC has provided AGF in developing a number of goat products. For one, APDC has developed new goat meat products with commercial potential. One of them is the smoked pure chevon longanisa which taste-testers consider superior to other meat sausages in the market.

Another version is the hungarian sausage which is also considered better than its counterparts in the market today. Actually, Josefina Contreras, APDC chief, says that whatever processed meat products that could be made from pork can also be made with goat’s meat.

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Here’s another unique business idea to help you earn more!

If you are interested in manufacturing soap products from detergent laundry soap to herbal soap, you should study the technology appropriate to each type.

It is also essential that you acquaint yourself with the basic requirements to be met in soap making. For example, an ordinary soap should be made from alkali and fats and oils (fatty acids), a moderate amount of matter insoluble in alcohol, and permissible additives. The finished product should neither bear any objectionable odor nor leave objectionable odor on fabrics and dishes after washing them and rinsing thoroughly with hot water. The soap should form suds or lather in a clean moderate hard water (less than 180m ppm CaC03) when tested.

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The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Rome, and China knew of the importance of edible mushrooms as food. Egyptian pharaohs zealously kept the mushrooms for their own use, decreeing it was too delicate a morsel for commoners who could eat garlic!

The Romans restricted mushroom consumption to the nobility. Later, convinced that mushrooms gave their soldiers strength, the Romans permitted them to eat the fungus. The ancient Chinese called mushrooms the “divine fruit of immortality,” and Buddha is believed to have eaten them before being transported to nirvana.

Nutritionally speaking, mushrooms contain higher quality proteins than green plants, important minerals such as iron, phosphorus, potassium and calcium and nearly all vitamins, including vitamin D. Edible mushrooms are rich in vitamins B1 and B2. They also contain fibers, which stimulate digestion in humans, as well as other elements favorable for health. Another advantage is that they can be grown at home without any great effort.

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Even small fishes are a great catch.

Proof to this is the tilanggit, the undersized tilapia that is being processed similar to danggit, or dried rabbit fish of Cebu. Tilanggit production is seen today as a promising livelihood, and three farmers’ association in Diffun, Quirino have found it viable.

The Diffun Farmers Livelihood Association (DFLA), Palacian Food Processors Association, and the Villa Pagaduan Multi-Livelihood Association are pleased with this venture. They are able to make money from undersized tilapia, which resulted from calamities or poor culture management.

“Processing undersized tilapia into tilanggit offers fish farmers a great way to recover investment on a losing venture.” said Dr. Jovita Ayson, director of Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) Region 2.

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You have never been to the Philippines unless you have eaten balut!

This is what most Filipinos tell foreigners who come to the Philippines for the first time. So, perhaps this must be the reason why the members of the rock band Switchfoot ate balut on stage at their concert in the country-to the delight of their Filipino fans!

A balut is a fertilized egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. It has been the “shocking” topic of some television shows because of its taboo nature in some Western cultures. In two episodes of Survivor: Palau and two episode of Survivor: China, separate challenges featured attempts to eat this fertilized egg. Similarly, Fear Factor frequently uses balut as a means of disgusting contestants. The Ultimate Fighter: Team Nogueira vs. Team Mir featured balut eaten by several contestants after its introduction by a Filipino-American fighter Phillipe Nover.

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Here’s another unique business idea to help you earn more!

Materials needed
• Coconut halves
• Wax (soy, paraffin, beeswax, etc)
• Scent cubes
• Wicks
• Belt sander (optional)
• Sand paper
• Aluminum soup can
• Pot for boiling water
• Stove
• Stirring device (like a knife, etc)
• Oven mitts
• Coconut stabilizers

Prepping
your coconut You have a choice. You can either leave the fiber on your coconut halve, or sand it down. Some choose to sand it down using a belt sander and strip the fiber away, and then use sand paper to really smooth it out.

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Learn how to make this famous Pinoy sandwich spread.

Ingredients
• grated coconut
• brown sugar
• glucose (corn syrup)

Utensils
• expeller or press
• stainless steel cooking vessel
• stainless steel spoon or ladle
• stove

Packaging material
Sterilized glass jars with new PVC caps

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Ordinary soil, farm wastes and cement equals durable hallow blocks.

Rural folks can beat the high prices of housing materials. Out of farm waste and ordinary soil, one can make durable hallow blocks comparable in strength to commercial ones. The hallow blocks can be made right on the building site fashioned similar to commercial hallow blocks. Although considered strictly non-load bearing, it is very satisfactory for low-cost housing. Its compressive strength ranges from i97 to 386 pounds per square inch (psi).

This simple technology, developed by the Forest Product Research and Industries Development Commission, makes use of a minimum amount of cement to make a stronger hallow block. One bag is enough to make 20 four-inch blocks or 12 six-inch blocks.

The first step is to gather agri-wood wastes such as sawdust, coconut trunk particles, sugar cane bagasse or ordinary soil. The latter has to be pulverized and sifted using a 1/4 inch wire mesh. Abaca waste, left after extracting fiber from the stalk, as well as coconut coir dust, the residue from processing coconut husk in coirflex plants, can also be used. Rice hull works too, but additional soil is needed when mixing this with cement.

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Learn how to prepare your own uling!

Charcoal made out of the modified pit method can be used in making charcoal briquettes. Charcoal briquette is charcoal duct compactly massed by a binder of cassava flour, corn or sweet potato starch.

As fuel, charcoal briquettes have higher heating value than wood or plain charcoal. They are almost smokeless when burning and give off intense and steady heat. They can be used in blast furnaces to replace coal in the smelting of iron ore since it is compact and dense.

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Make your own sawsawan at home!

The native vinegar has gone a long way, from being a home- consumption product to an export commodity. Common raw materials for making vinegar are cane sugar juice, coconut water or nipa sap. Aside from these pineapples, bananas, oranges, potatoes and sweet potatoes can also be fermented into vinegar. Waste peels and fruit cores can be put to good use as starting materials for vinegar.

Grid or crush the fruit, then boil in water of the same amount as ground flesh, peels and cores. Boil until soft, then strain the juice though a cheese cloth.

Add 1/4 (one fourth) pound of sugar for every liter of juice extracted from fruit peels and cores. Do not add sugar when using ripe fruit.

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Learn how to cook this well-loved merienda!

Lomi or pancit lomi is a Chinese-Filipino dish made with a variety of thick fresh egg noodles of about a quarter of an inch in diameter. Because of its popularity at least in the eastern part of Batangas, there are as many styles of cooking lomi as there are eateries, panciterias or restaurants offering the dish. Variations in recipes and quality are therefore very common.

Magic meat is added in hydrated form to lessen the pork content and the addition of soy protein increases the volume and nutritional value of the recipe.

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Here are some useful recipes for ampalaya :

Ampalaya con carne

Ingredients:
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 medium (50 g) onion, sliced
• 200 g beef round, cut into strips
• 3/4 cup water
• 1-1/2 tbsp tausi (salted black beans)
• 1 can (140 g) Tomato Sauce
• 1 bunch (200 g) sitao (string beans), cut into 1-1/2″ long PCs.
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 large (300 g) ampalaya (bitter melon), seeded and thinly sliced

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Pepperoni is often recognized as the American counterpart of the Spanish style chorizo. This is understandable because both are similar in color and flavor. It is a descendant of the spicy salamis of southern Italy, a spicy dry sausage from Naples. Pepperoni is a popular pizza topping in American style pizzerias, Italian translation of “peppers”.

The recipe is a revision of the original recipe adapted to Filipino style which can be consumed for breakfast, used for toppings, sandwiches and pasta dishes. It is composed of pork lean, beef lean and backfat made from the following ingredients: curing mix; extenders and seasonings. It is cured stuffed either in natural and collagen casings.

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