Agriculture Business Week

When someone becomes a farmer without the knowledge of the new rice technology, he is almost certain that his yields and income would be miserably low. This is especially true if the new farmer has been practicing another profession in a foreign land

Such was the case of Dominador Perez of Purok Centro, Agbannawag, Rizal, Nueva Ecija. He was a mechanic for 35 years, first in the Philippines and in Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Iraq, and finally in Saudi Arabia.

Doming, now 66 years old, finished his high school education in 1959 from a trade school and specialized in automotive mechanic. Immediately after graduation, he worked as a mechanic of the Rural Transit until 1966. ‘He then worked as heavy equipment mechanic of the United States Navy in Vietnam.

After working there for a year, the US Navy allowed him to bring his wife, Corazon, to Vietnam. He worked there from 1966 to 1972 and then in Papua New Guinea from 1972 to 1975.

After a year, he went to Iraq to work as a concreting foreman up to 1982, and then in Saudi Arabia from 1983 to 1994.

During that stretch of 35 years, he supported the education of his children and acquired 5 hectares (ha) of farmland for rice production and a 2,000 sq. m. residential lot. However, he was forced to sell 2 ha in 1992, because his salary in Saudi Arabia was not enough to defray the education of their third child who was then pursuing nursing. Right now, he has 4.8 ha.

LOW YIELDS, LOW INCOME
Actually, Domingo was already farming even before he became a full-time farmer. He used to farm while waiting for his employment contract for a job abroad to be processed. However, his yields were low because he was using traditional varieties and he was not yet keen in farming since he was just using his free time to keep himself busy.

Thus, when he started to farm full time in 1995 – he remembered – his yields were ridiculously low – 3 to 4 tons from 3 ha. True, a yield level that low would make one who used to earn green bucks desperate.

This was why he started to attend seminars sponsored by agricultural chemical companies whose primary purpose was to encourage farmers to use their products. Doming, however, bewailed, that the cost of their products was high and, hence, his income was low especially during the wet season.

His only consolation was his yield increased to 4 tons a hectare (t/ha) in the wet season and 5 t/ha in the dry season. Of course, his net income was higher than what he had when he began as a full-time farmer.

During the seminars, he said, technicians of these companies taught them how to use their products, which were either insecticides or herbicides. The seminars were conducted before the planting season and samples were given to raffle winners at the end of each seminar. In many instances, however, the samples were not enough and so they still had to buy additional supply.

PALAYCHECK, PART
Eight years after Doming shifted to full time farming, he became a PalayCheck cooperating farmer in the wet season of 2003 along with 18 farmers from Brgy. Cabucbucan who started a year earlier than him. PalayCheck is a rice farming system patterned by PhilRice after Australia’s RiceCheck, which increased the yields of its farmers. It integrates and balances key technology and management recommendations with farmers’ practices to sustain improvement in productivity, profitability, and environment-safety.

Doming said the local government unit’s agricultural technicians started to go to the barangay as the local government unit was a collaborator in the PalayCheck. Researchers of PhilRice in Brgy. Maligaya, Science City of Munoz led in implementing the project since the PalayCheck is PhilRice’s “baby.”

It was only then that his rice yields enabled him to gain much more than before. His yields greatly improved with less inputs like seeds and, hence, he had less production cost. This resulted in higher net income.

He devoted 0.5 ha for the PalayCheck. Of the nine checks in the first season, he attained seven and harvested 60 bags or an equivalent of 120 bags per hectare. If a bag weighed 50 kilograms (kg), his harvest was equivalent to 6,000 kg/ha. Normally, however, the bags are large and contain much more than 50 kg each and sometimes 60 kg.

He maintained his yield in the next season with six of seven checks. In the third season of PalayCheck, he harvested 75 bags or an equivalent of 150 bags per hectare (7,500 kg, given that a bag weighed 50 kg) with six of seven ‘checks from a transplanted private hybrid.

PalayCheck requires that threshing must be done a day after cutting to avoid shattering, but Doming did not attain this because the harvesters, who were paid on a percentage basis, took three days before they threshed the harvested crop.

A year before he became a PalayCheck cooperating farmer, he was unanimously chosen as chairman of the Agbannawag Norte PART (Partnership in Agricultural and Rural Transformation) Association, which PhilRice helped organize. The association has 32 members in Agbannawag.

Through the PART, its members were linked with Atlas Fertilizer, which provided fertilizers to them on credit, payable after the harvest season. The farmer pays 10 percent interest on the cost of the fertilizer, which goes to the association. Moreover, Doming said that members may obtain loans from the accrued interest earnings payable at the end of the cropping season with 10 percent interest.

Based on his records, Doming said that for every hectare in the 2007 dry season, he borrowed eight bags of fertilizer which consist of four bags complete (17-17-17), two bags ammonium phosphate (20-10-0) and two bags 17-0-17. All together, these -ost him P6,226 including interest.

TCP3
Since PhilRice was satisfied with Doming’s leadership ability and with the performance of the farmers in PART, PhilRice, Mayor Eugenio L. Placido Jr.

and the local municipal agriculture office, again chose Agbannawag as the site for its third technical cooperation project (TCP 3) with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) starting in the wet season of 2005.

By unanimous choice, Doming was singled out as one of the project’s four techno-demo farmers (TDFs). Since then he has served as the project’s liaison with the other TDFs and participating farmers.

He has been very diligent in learning the new rice technology, as indicated by his attendance and post-test score in the farmers’ field school (FFS) of the project. He never missed even one of the 22 FFS sessions during the 2006 wet season; he got 96 percent, the highest score in the post-test.

Unlike in Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur where vegetable and livestock production are integrated with rice, farmers in Agbannawag cannot follow their counterparts in Ilocos because there is hardly a space suited for vegetable production, except probably the levees.

Records of the project which Doming showed to this writer, indicated that for three seasons now, he has been establishing his crop with a drumseeder. He used this equipment again for his 2007 – wet-season crop.

His first crop with TCP 3 in the 2005 wet season was transplanted PSB Rc82, which gave him 5.67 t/ha. He started using a drumseeder for crop establishment in the 2006 dry season. In that season, he planted a private hybrid and harvested 10.98 t/ha.

Because the present hybrids are susceptible to bacterial leaf blight during the wet season, he planted the inbred NSIC Rc 122 in the wet season of 2006. Although his yield dropped to 5.82 t/ha, this was still quite higher than his yield in the 2005 wet season.

He direct-seeded a private hybrid again with a drum seeder in this year’s dry season and harvested 10.03 t/ha, which was 950 kg lower than his yield in 2006 dry season.. Despite the slight decrease, his harvest ~ was still a whopping 200 bags per hectare.

Doming said that through PalayCheck and TCP 3; he has learned a lot of technologies that buoyed his yields to levels much higher than in the past.

Among them is the complete leveling of the farm before transplanting to control the golden kuhol and to minimize weed growth. High and low spots where water may accumulate are avoided. At the same time, water must be managed to a depth of 2 to 3 inches after transplanting to minimize golden kuhol damage and control weeds.

He added that for a direct-seeded crop, fertilizer must be applied for the first time 10 to 14 days after seeding; for a transplanted crop, it should be applied 7 to 10 days after transplanting. Weekly leaf color chart readings would indicate the need to apply urea. Topdressing must be done during the panicle initiation stage or when the panicles start to develop at the base of the plants. He said that during the dry season, he applied a bag of urea (45-0-0) or muriate of potash (0-0-60) per hectare when the panicles of 5 to 10 percent of the crop emerged. Likewise, insecticides should be applied only when extremely necessary, he said.

Asked what he will do when the project is over, Doming said he will continue to use the technologies he has learned. He would even try to improve them, if needed. And since the PhilRice Central Experiment Station is just very well, he will continue to consult the national rice agency’s scientists and researchers, especially those who served as lecturers during the FFS.

The bottom line is that Doming is an excellent example of the rice farmer who strives to improve his productivity by listening carefully to technologists and experts, adopting everything that would benefit him, and seeking for more useful technologies.