Agriculture Business Week

Learning is said to be the key to almost everything, and this seems to be true also in farming.

Farmers who joined the Technical Cooperation Project 4 (TCP4) in Mindanao attest this. With the new farm technologies they learned in this technology transfer project, they were able to increase the productivity and profitability of their small farms.

One notable farmer who participated in this project of ARMM, PhilRice, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries-ARMM, and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is Kalim Lamug of Brar, Maguindanao.

Kalim lost his left leg, but he did not let his disability stop him from doing heavy farm work for he is determined to succeed. Likewise, he is also determined to learn new farm technologies in the project’s Farmers’ Field School (FFS) to increase the productivity of his vegetable farm.

Among the things he learned in the FFS is to wrap young ampalaya fruits with plastic to ward off wasps. He also learned to use light traps to catch insect pests. At night, he places a kerosene lamp and basin of water mixed with pesticide near his vegetables to attract and catch insects to prevent these from damaging his crops.

Kalim uses insect attractants, too. He mixes pesticide with muscovado sugar and spreads the mixture onto small plastic sheets, which he hangs on the trellis. Fruit borers hardly resist the attractant, he said.

With his hard work and guts, Kalim touched the hearts of the facilitators and won the admiration of JICA that the Agency gave him a wooden leg. But there’s something that is more to the artificial leg. The knowledge on new farm technologies that he had from TCP 4 is the crutch that enables him to earn thousands of pesos every harvest.

Today, the 52-year-old amputee who was hardly making ends meet with his farm income is an established vegetable producer who can afford to send his children to school.

The farmers in Buadi Amaloy, Masiu, Lanao del Sur have another success story to tell.

Prior to the TCP 4, they did not know what to do with their rice farming. Their seeding rate for certified inbred seeds for instance, was more than 100 kg/ha yet the recommended rate was only 40 kg. They did not know also how much and when fertilizer should be applied.

These were among the many aspects of rice production in which they needed to improve, said Alexander Mangondaya, agricultural promotion officer in Lanao del Sur.

The good thing was that the farmers were very receptive to new farm technologies. They actively participated in the FFS and in the participatory technology demonstration (PTD) trials of the TCP 4, hence they learned the technologies well.

“We have higher yields now and we have higher income,” said Sacar Macahunding, a farmer in Buadi Amaloy. Samurado Calandala is also pleased with the turn out of the FFS and PTD. If not for the these, he wouldn’t be able to increase his yield, he said.

Another good thing that happened in Buadi Amaloy was that the farmers who participated in the TCP 4 took the initiative of teaching those who did not join. Now that’s a different kind of technology transfer.

If farmers are happy with the technologies, the agricultural technologists (AT) who trained them are glad, too for they have been of help.

Actually many of the ATs did not have knowledge on rice and vegetable productions until they underwent a training in the TCP 4.

They were brought to ricefields, large vegetable plantations in Ilocos Region, Institute of Plant Breeding in the University of the Philippines Los Banos, the site of the Pagkain Para sa Masa program at the University of Southern Mindanao, and in East West Seed Company in Bulacan to witness the latest technologies.

After the training, they tirelessly shared the technologies to their respective provinces. In Sulu for instance, the ATs of TCP 4 gave technical assistance to six seedling nurseries of the Gulayan Para sa Masa program, which cater to the whole province.

“We echo whatever technologies we learn from the training,” said Aida Jumli, municipal agriculturist of Bongao, Tawi-Tawi. “And this gives farmers a better chance of getting higher yields.”

By Jaime A. Manalo IV