Agriculture Business Week

A new coconut variety that can yield as many as 150 nuts per tree in one year was showcased at the recent coconut festival and trade fair held at the SM Megamall recently. This is the Orgullo Tall, a synthetic San Ramon variety that was developed by the breeding and genetics division headed by Ramon Rivera of the San Ramon Experiment Station of the Philippine Coconut Administration in Zamboanga City.

According to Ernesto Emmanuel who was tending the exhibit booth at the trade fair, San Ramon Orgullo Tall is a combination of 15 different coconut hybrids that evolved from plantings starting 1992.

After many years of observation, the high-yielding trees were identified and selected for multiplication.
Being a synthetic variety, the nuts produced could be used for planting. In five years, the tree has been observed to start flowering in Mindanao. However, some plants planted in Lucena City have been reported to start flowering in just three and a half years from planting.

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Perhaps, one way of helping Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala achieve his goal of stopping rice importation after three years is to grow more camote and more people shifting from rice to eating camote.

That will not only help us attain rice self-sufficiency, it could also result in more healthy Filipinos. Ask our good friend Dr. Wilfredo Yap, an expert in aquaculture, who noticed with alarm last October (he was then 63) that his fasting blood sugar (FBS) had shot up to 160 mg per deciliter (mg/dl). His blood pressure went up to 150 over 100.

When we met him last April during a forum at the MFI Foundation, he was ecstatic in telling us that camote was responsible for lowering his blood pressure to the normal level of 120 over 80, sometimes 110 over 80 in just a few weeks of eating camote instead of rice. We asked him to write about how he did it and we promised to publish it in the Agriculture Magazine. He only wrote the article after we saw him again last June at a gathering at the Gawad Kalinga project in Angat, Bulacan.

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An interesting farming couple in San Ildefonso, Bulacan, have a smart way of maximizing production in the 11 hectares that they are planting to vegetables the whole year round. They plant the next crop way ahead of the last harvest of the standing crop on the same piece of land.

They are the husband and wife team of Felipe and Jessilyn Ramos, 40 and 38 years old, respectively, of Brgy. Sumandig, San Ildefonso town. Felipe is an agriculture graduate who used to work for a multinational company distributing agricultural chemicals and corn and vegetable seeds. He was head of the Farmers Support Team (FST) in charge of helping farmers grow better crops with the use of improved farming technologies. While Felipe was employed, Jessilyn engaged in buying vegetables and selling them at the Clover Leaf Market in Balintawak, Quezon City.

While Felipe received a decent salary from the multinational firm, he noticed that probably the farmers that they were helping were making much more money than he from growing vegetables. In 2004, he decided to give up his employment so that he could also grow vegetables in the one hectare that they owned. In October 2004, he planted his first crop of ampalaya, tomato and pole sitao.

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A farmer from Davao del Sur maximized his plantation by transforming coconuts into amazing value-added products.

“The amazing thing about the coconut palm is that it provides almost all the necessities of life: food, drink, oil, medicine, fiber, timber, thatch, mats, fuel, and domestic utensils, as well as serving important environmental services such as soil erosion control in coastal regions, wind protection and shade for other crops,” wrote Craig Elevitch, author of various books on tropical agriculture.

Benjamin R. Lao, who owns a farm in barangay Eman in Bansalan, Davao del Sur, is very much aware of the versatility of coconut. So much that he produces several products out of coconuts, including coco sugar and coco syrup. Both don’t only command good prices, there is also a big demand for them in national and international markets.

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There’s more to the humble peanut than you think. Aside from being a tasty snack, peanuts are highly nutritious.

A 100-g serving of peanuts contains 585 cal of unsaturated or “good fat”. Pound for pound, it contains more protein than eggs, dairy products, fish, and some meat cuts. Peanuts also contribute to several aspects of our Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamins and minerals. Finally, it has dietary fiber that can reduce the risk of certain types of cancer.

Moreover, peanut plants can also improve soil fertility by fixing the nitrogen from the air. Since the plants contain high amounts of protein, they are ideal feeds for farm animals.

Ensuring peanut seed security With these benefits, the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD) launched the Integrated Peanut R&D Program for Region 2.

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Banana and cacao have something in common – they grow best when under shade. Thus, simultaneously growing these crops between coconut trees offer an alternative source of food and income for coconut farmers.

In Quezon Province, Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD’s) Techno Gabay Program supports two concurrent Science and Technology-based Farm (STBF) projects on banana-coconut and cacao-coconut.

A group from PCARRD headed by Dr. Arturo S. Argafiosa together with Mr. Gil Flores of the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) visited the project sites in Quezon on January 19 to monitor the STBFs’ progress.

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Virginia Tobacco is the variety usually planted by most farmers in the Ilocos and other places in the North. But if you ask Ben Mencias of Villasis, Pangasinan, he would rather plant the native tobacco which does not require flue-curing. His brother Loreto, on the other hand, prefers to plant another type of tobacco from Brazil that only needs air-drying like the native variety.

The Mencias brothers are from Brgy. Barangubong in Villasis. Loreto is a 1984 graduate of agriculture from the Pangasinan State University. He served for a short time as agriculturist in Tayug after graduation but went to Saudi Arabia soon after to work as a landscaping supervisor until 1994.

After his return to his hometown, he did not seek employment anymore. Instead, he decided to become a full-time farmer. At the end of the rainy season, his favorite crop is the native tobacco locally known as “Batek.” He explained that the native tobacco is much easier to grow than Virginia tobacco. For one, he does not have to hurry the harvesting of the leaves. Even if the leaves become over-ripe, it is all right. But not in the case of Virginia tobacco.

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In recent years, more and more people are eating cashew nuts. The reason: health experts and nutritionists considered it as “nature’s vitamin pill.”

In the Philippines, many farmers are reluctant to venture into tree farming because it does not provide them immediate returns, unlike the growing of agricultural crops. But in the long run, tree farming is more profitable since it means more money and conservation. Trees help conserve the land by minimizing excessive soil erosion and run-off. Wood products mean additional income to the farmer. In addition, a farmer doesn’t have to attend his trees all the time once they have grown up.

One tree that can be a good source of income for farmers and simultaneously help the environment is cashew (scientific name: Anacardium occidentale). The forestry department of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos (UPLB) puts it this way: “Planting cashew trees in idle lands may be the best solution to our land conservation problem. As an agricultural crop, cashew trees provide vegetative cover to barren lands and help minimize soil erosion. There is also money in cashew. Its fruit has varied uses and commands a good price in the market.”

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Finally, Asha peanut is now a commercial variety recommended for local planting following the recent approval from the National Seed Industry Council (NSIC) of the Bureau of Plant Industry. It is registered as NSIC 2009 Pn 15.

Rose Mary G. Aquino of the Cagayan Valley Integrated Agricultural Research Center (CVIARC) of the Department of Agriculture Region 2 based in San Felipe, Ilagan, Isabela and is also the project leader in the production of Asha peanut in the Philippines, said that Asha was approved after it passed a series of testing and careful evaluation required for its commercial release.

Results from the 17 national cooperative trials showed that Asha consistently ranked number one in terms of yield, surpassing the NSIC national check variety Pn 11 by 22% and 10% during wet and dry seasons, respectively. It produced the highest recorded yield of 3,991 kg per hectare which is double the yield of commercial peanut varieties in the country.

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The Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC) Foundation, Inc. recommends the following steps in producing our own seeds.

In Genesis chapter 1, 1 verse 30, God told Adam and Eve, “I give you every green plant for food.” And it was so. The propagation of plants is basically divided into two types: the sexual (or propagation by seeds) and the asexual (or propagation using vegetative parts or plants). Among the two types, seeds are the most important.

“Seeds are many things,” wrote Victor R. Boswell, author of The Importance of Seeds. “Above all else, they are a way of survival of their species. They are a way by which embryonic life can be almost suspended and then revived to new development – even years after the parents are dead and gone.”

No wonder, Filipino farmers who plant vegetables, beans, pulses and cereals are planting seeds for their next crop season. This is the reason why the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC) Foundation, Inc., through its several years of experience, is urging farmers to produce their own seeds.

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Farmers were urged to take measures to lessen the effects of El Niño on crops and livestock, especially when the dry spell intensifies in the coming months.

Engr. Ric Oblena and Angel Enriquez, regional executive director and regional technical director respectively of the Department of Agriculture in Central Visayas (DA-7) made the call during the recent livestock and poultry planning workshop attended by around 50 livestock commodity coordinators and provincial counterparts at the Ubay Stock Farm in Ubay, Bohol.

Oblena said one of the things that farmers can do is to make silage, a technology in which forage grasses are fermented for future use by livestock animals. The DA is ready to teach interested farmers on the rudiments of technology.

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A rubber disease which affected many plantations in Sri Lanka in the mid 1980s has entered the Philippines.

The leaf spot disease is found and documented recently at the University of Southern Mindanao (USM) by plant pathologist Dr. Naomi G. Tangonan and researchers Jasmine A. Pecho and Elaine Genivive G. Butardo. It has affected rubber nurseries and plantations in USM, particularly the RRIM 600 rubber, which is known for having high latex yield.

Caused by the fungus Corynespora cassiicola, leaf spot disease symptoms are the yellowing of and occurrence of large lesions that look like railroad track on the leaves. The disease usually occurs during refoliation period. It infects new foliage flushes, killing young branches if the infection is severe.

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A contractual worker of the local government of Tarlac has developed an alternative way of reproducing mushroom spawns and other innovations in mushroom culture.

That’s Pablito Saiiniento of Dau, Mabalacat, Pampanga. He found that ipil-ipil or kakawate twigs can be used as a substrate in multiplying fungus mycelia or mushroom spawns. When made into wood chips, the twigs, said Sarmiento, are good alternative to potato-dextroseagar (PDA), which is the primary substrate in reproducing the fungus.

This 44-year-old worker who trained from the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of UP Los Banos learned this as he observed that fungus growth in decaying twigs of trees is more luxuriant and robust. Then he conducted experiments at home and determined the ideal sizes of wood chips to be used.

This technique is simple as preparation of PDA, claims Sarmiento, is long and tedious, hence it is prone to contamination. Moreover, mycelium is reportedly more viable with this method.

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Arrowroot is probably one of the most neglected crops by our government agriculturists and researchers. But one lady entrepreneur is really obsessed in making this crop a winner that could catapult her province to prominence.

The lady is Mrs. Carmelita Rejano-Reyes, a chemistry graduate who opted to take over the operation of the bakeshop that her parents started in 1946. The bakeshop, now known as Rejano’s Marinduque Deli in Sta. Cruz, specializes in arrowroot cookies and other preparations.

Carmelita proudly says that her arrowroot products are made of pure arrowroot flour so that they virtually melt in the mouth. They are, unlike some arrowroot products from other places which are probably combined with wheat flour.

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