Agriculture Business Week

From 1983 TO 1989, Engracio Martin of Brgy. Pag-asa, Rizal, Nueva Ecija worked in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia as an electrician. Even if his initial salary was not much, $380 a month with food allowance in the first three years, it even went down to $320 in the next three years.

Realizing that his employer only wanted to take advantage of the unemployment rate in the Philippines by offering lower salary, he finally decided to go home even if he did not have any definite plan for the future. He was certain that he would be able to manage his financial situation in no time at all. For one thing, he had saved some money from his meager salary and second, since he has a college degree in agriculture from the Sabani State Agricultural College in Gabaldon, Nueva Ecija, he could venture into farming.

When he went home, he bought a tricycle and used it as a public conveyance vehicle. It did not take long before someone mortgaged a hectare of rice land to him for P30,000 and that was the start of his farming. Three years later, an additional 7,000 sq. m. was mortgaged to him again. He drove his tricycle in the mornings and worked in the farm in the afternoons so he would be able to provide well for his family.

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Posted on November 20th, 2008 under Entrepreneurs, Rice. Tags: Entrepreneurs, Farming, PhilRice, Rice. Comments: None

Even at 69, Ernesto Romero of Pinagpanaan, Talavera, Nueva Ecija, a UP Los Banos graduate who never worked in either government offices or private companies, continues to look for more income from high-value crops. His new discovery is green papaya, and he uses the Sinta variety and Taiit-an sili, aruy-uy, and tomato as intercrops.

He said it is a lot better to market green papaya than ripe papaya fruits and claimed that with green fruits, he has no problems on rejects and fruitflies. In contrast, many ripe fruits are rejected because of abnormal shape and size. Even if the price of ripe papaya is higher than the green ones, his sale from green papaya is still much more.

He calculated that he can easily get a gross income of P1.5 million from a hectare in 1.5 years. That’s because he has 1,000 plants per hectare and the fruits of each plant in 1.5 years would be worth P1,500.

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Posted on November 4th, 2008 under Entrepreneurs. Tags: Entrepreneurs. Comments: None

There are two farm entrepreneurs we met recently whom we admire immensely. They are Jesus D. Lansang of Sta. Rita, Pampanga, and Benito Magaling of Lipa City.

They have a common denominator. Both of them keep complete records of their expenses and incomes in their farming operations.

By doing so, they readily know whether they are making any money or not. Magaling, who grows finger pepper and ampalaya, for instance, knows how much he had spent growing his finger peppers up to the time he started harvesting. He had spent some P130,000 on his two hectares before the first fruits were harvested. He also knows which operation required the biggest expense - which happens to be weeding.
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Posted on October 13th, 2008 under Entrepreneurs. Tags: Entrepreneurs. Comments: None

In an industry where stiff competition prevails, a neophyte entrepreneur must know how to secure his share of market and keep business alive.

To 25-year old entrepreneur Janice Buenaventura of Malabon City, niche marketing has been the key to her successful iced tea business. Niche marketing, she said, is producing a good specifically for a certain market, where consumers are willing to pay for a premium price for that good.

“I opted for the niche market because I know I could not afford to compete with the bigger players,” she said, adding that these companies produce in large-scale basis which results in much cheaper price of their respective products.

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Posted on September 30th, 2008 under Entrepreneurs. Tags: Entrepreneurs, Iced Tea. Comments: None

He has a very unusual name, Irlfe Masif Saavedra. But that’s not the only unusual thing about this 43-year-old fellow from Malaybalay City in Bukidnon. At 18 years old, while enrolled in a commerce course at Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro, he had the foresight of developing a 2.5 hectare farm that his parents inherited. He planted 200 mango trees from which he has been making as much as P1.5 million a year to this day.

Also quite remarkable is the fact that he keeps complete records of his farming activities. That way, he knows whether he is making money or not from his projects. The records could tell him, for instance, if it is better to shift to some other crop. With the advent of computers, record keeping and analysis of farming trends are so much easier now, making farming more flexible and profitable for people like Saavedra.

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Posted on September 30th, 2008 under Entrepreneurs. Tags: Entrepreneurs, Farming, Mango. Comments: None

Local fruits like calamansi and santol are finding their respectful market niches; thanks to this lady.

Castillejos Agri-Farm Inc.’s president Lourdes Labrador was born into the world of food. As a child, she grew up cosseted by a conservative government employee patriarch and a mother who she says she acquired her entrepreneurial skills from. And for as long as she can remember, her love affair with food has been nothing short of delightful.

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Posted on September 25th, 2008 under Entrepreneurs, Fruits. Tags: Calamansi, Entrepreneurs, Santol. Comments: None

A Filipino pride advocate finds a way to bring gourmet coffee to the masses.

The growth of coffee shops in the Metro has revealed to numerous entrepreneurs    and aficionados alike what the coffee industry holds for them in the immediate future. And individuals like Patrick Joson, the man behind what blogs and urbanite critics now call “The Filipinos’ Choice”, Kape ni Juan, isn’t so far behind so much so that he even encourages it.

It also helps that the Philippines is one of the few countries in the Pacific that is fortunate to have all four major coffee varieties present in its soil. Our country is actually situated in the ‘coffee belt’, a part of the globe which has only two seasons-wet and dry, entailing a tropical climate, sufficient amount of rain and humidity that’s advantageous to coffee farmers. This became more renowned especially in the `90s, where the Philippines became the fourth largest coffee-producing country in the world.
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Posted on September 21st, 2008 under Coffee, Entrepreneurs. Tags: Coffee, Entrepreneurs. Comments: None

PAGASA president and this year’s Agrilink chairman Steven Cua enlightens us why “supermarketing” is fast becoming the newest in thing.

Steven Cua was born into the business of supermarkets. In fact, he and his family used to live inside a supermarket, orienting him to the retailing business early on. He recalled, “When I teas in high school, every year they would ask, `What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I didn’t know they kept a record of these things and before you leave high school, they’d remind you. My Hungarian priest told me, `You know Steve, every year you said you wanted to be a businessman except for first year high school, you said you wanted to be a doctor.’ And I go, `Yes, my dad said we were all in business so maybe I should be a doctor.’ Then he said, “Don’t be a doctor, be a businessman. You may be the best doctor there is but if you’re not happy doing what you’re doing, it’ll amount to nothing.”‘ He figured from that speech that it was in his blood, and it was no surprise that after college, he immediately joined retailing.

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Posted on September 14th, 2008 under Entrepreneurs. Tags: Entrepreneurs, Supermarket. Comments: None

He is now 77, but he is as hale and hearty as ever. He is Angel L. Javellana who used to hold a high executive position in Del Monte Philippines and now enjoying his brand of organic farming in Valencia City in Bukidnon. He calls his place Manupali Natural Farm, a six-hectare property.

Angel, who was born in Iloilo City, is a highly educated professional with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from De La Salle and a masters also in chemical engineering practice from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. In his earlier years he was into teaching at La Salle and for sometime, he engaged in consultancy in the United States. All along, however, he has been interested in farming. And that’s why he enjoyed very much his job as field superintendent at Del Monte from 1966 to 1979.

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Posted on September 13th, 2008 under Entrepreneurs, Organic. Tags: Entrepreneurs, Manure, Organic. Comments: None