Agriculture Business Week

A young farmer from Kalinga province in Northern Luzon is making people’s heads turn in Sto. Tomas, Batangas as he produces big heads of cabbage.

He is 26-year-old Elmer Migo, an agriculture graduate from the Kalinga-Apayao State College in Tabuk, the provincial capital of Kalinga. After finishing college, he joined his parents in Sto. Tomas where they had earlier migrated in search of a better life as they did not own land in their home province. He first found work as salesman for a consumer products firm, then joined the Sto.Tomas municipal agriculturist’s office as crop technician. Later, agribusiness film Allied Botanical Corporation (ABC) employed him as agronomist.

He introduced and promoted to farmers throughout Batangas high-yield, pest and disease-resistant vegetable varieties, seeds of which ABC bred, produced and marketed.

Finding an opportunity to be in a more familiar environment and doing something he had done since his boyhood days, Migo resigned after six months from ABC to himself grow the crops he had been promoting. He rented idle land in Barangay San Antonio in Sto. Tomas, in the southern foothills of Mt. Makiling, and began planting Condor Gladiator, a widely adaptable, heat-tolerant, hybrid cabbage cultivar for lowland cultivation. He started with a 1,000-square meter lot on a gradually sloping hillside, later renting a 4,000- sq.m. field not far from his first site.

To benefit most from the idle land that he rented, Migo prepared the hillsides by employing the practice known as contour farming. This practice involves plowing or making ridges or hills across a slope following its elevation contour lines in order to reduce fertilizer loss, increase crop yield, and prevent soil erosion.

Contour rows slow water run-off during rain to prevent erosion, and give water time to settle into the soil and be distributed more evenly. In contour plowing, the furrows formed by the plow or hoe run perpendicular rather than parallel to the slope. As a result, the furrows curve around the land and are level.

In ideal conditions, contour farming is said to increase the yields of row crops by at least 10 percent to as much as 50 percent. Compared to up-and-down cultivation of sloping land, contour farming also reduces erosion by as much as 50 percent. The practice is similar to the terracing done in the Northern Luzon provinces of Benguet, Ifugao, Mountain Province, Kalinga, and in mountainous areas of Nueva Vizcaya.

When the field was ready for planting, Migo directly sowed two to three Condor Gladiator seeds on the contoured hills that he had formed 60 centimeters apart. He opted for a wide planting space so he could harvest bigger cabbage heads, so he sowed the seeds also 60 cm apart, one-and-one fourth cm deep in the soil. After the seeds germinated, he thinned the seedlings, retaining only the most vigorous ones.

Migo side-dressed his crop with nitrogen fertilizer when the plants were half grown. To control weeds, he carried out shallow cultivation around the plants. He irrigated the field so the cabbage heads could develop quickly. He found the hillside soil so conducive to cabbage production that it took his first crop only 64 to 67 days after planting to harvest, instead of the 70 to 75 days set by the ABC research and breeding facility in Tayug, Pangasinan. His first crop in the two rented fields, which he planted on October 9, was ready for harvest on December 12, when ABC technicians came to evaluate his cabbage. He estimated his harvest to bring him a gross return of at least P90,000 at the P35 to P40 per kilo farmgate price that viajeros would give him.

ABC technicians advised Migo to harvest the cabbage heads when they are firm if pressed by hand and before they begin to split or burst. Sudden heavy
rain may cause heads to split or burst open and the exposed internal tissue will become useless. Split and bursting heads should be harvested as soon as these appear.

Migo plans to use the greater part of his earnings to plant more cabbage come next cropping season. “I will rent a one-and-a-half hectare field just across the barangay road from my 4,000-sq.m. site” he says. “I will also begin growing carrots and heat-tolerant mini lettuce, which I’ve started testing in my fields. But in the case of lettuce I’ll also have to see first how it will be accepted in the town market.”

In expanding his production area, which is not far from where he lives, he doesn’t see any major problem. “Pests, like the diamond-back moth in cabbage, are a minor one,” he says. “Water for the plants is not a problem even in the dry months because of Makiling’s numerous springs. All that’s needed are long hoses for piping water from the sources. To help me in the cultivation work, I asked an uncle in Kalinga, mother’s brother-in-law, Romeo Pongtachen, to come and be my industrial partner. And I’m more than sure ABC will continue to provide me with seeds and the latest production technologies, especially now that I’m a customer.”

Migo is showing other farmers in Sto. Tomas that cabbage and other highland crops are easy to grow in their area. “We can produce vegetables that have higher value than the ones traditionally grown here,” he says. “With our fertile soil and abundant water, all we need are suitable varieties, proper cultural practices, and insect management.”

The municipal agriculturist’s office is enlisting Migo’s help in encouraging and helping farmers in Sto.Tomas to grow more high-value vegetables. Initially, he has helped form a small association of semi-commercial growers to serve as a nucleus group that will attract small farmers who want to accomplish more and be more profitable in what they’re doing at present. What he is doing is in effect taking on the two of the jobs he had after he first came to Sto. Tomas – working with the local government agriculturists and with a private agribusiness company to help the town’s farmers make their livelihood more gainful and ultimately improve their lives.

By Antonio A. Rodirguez