Mayor Becomes Papaya Farmer
Alex Alcarde Centena has spent almost two decades in politics. He has been a town councilor for 10 years and mayor of Calinog, Iloilo for 9 years. He used to start and end his days with public service. Nowadays when he’s not anymore in office, he is still as enthusiastic as before, and that’s because of his new-found venture.
He is producing Red Lady papayas in 3 hectares of his family’s vast property in Brgy. Cabagiao in Calinog. He started in June 2007 and by July, he began the land preparation, which was one of the most expensive phases of production, second to maintenance of the plantation itself.
Asked why he chose to produce the Red Lady variety, he said it’s because “aside from the fact that it is more prolific and has marketable size, Red Lady papaya tree only grows several feet tall so it is easier to harvest fruits from it.
Today, Alex has 4,500 papaya trees. And to maximize his farm land, he planted ginger, squash, red and green bell pepper, and onions in the rows between papaya trees. He piles up heaps of rice stalks from his family’s ricemill underneath every tree for this helps control weeds, which he feeds to his herd of sheep and cows. He also raises pigs, horses, goats, turkeys, ducks, geese, guinea fowls, and chickens, and he mixes their droppings with rice hull charcoal to make fertilizer for his papaya trees.
So how much did he invest and earn in this venture? “As per the project study that we had for this,” says Alex, “it was estimated that we would spend almost P300,000 per hectare and we did. But the gross income from selling the fruits at P 10 per kilo is close to P1 million or more, with a big profit rate.”
Here’s more interesting. Since the demand for ripe Red Lady papaya is higher than the supply of which, the price per kilo could go as high as P25 to P30, which means that his projected income could be doubled.
How about marketing? Well as for Alex, he doesn’t have much problem marketing his produce. In his first harvest early this year for instance, he got about 300 kilos per week and he was able to sell all of it to a buyer from Iloilo and one from Boracay Island in Aklan in just days. This time he even expects to harvest as high as 700 kilos per week and it seems that he will easily market these because many buyers have already phoned hill, to place an order as early as now.
Right now Alex also sells Red Lady papaya seedlings at P50 and naturally made fertilizer at a low price. He also gives farmers free consultation on papaya production so that they, too would rake in big profits.
Popularity: 6%
Popularity: 6%
