Agriculture Business Week

Rolly Lagaya, the successful poultry farmer from San Jose, Batangas shares with us his “innovative” tale of success.

Arapid change is now sweeping the Philippine poultry industry. The sector—which is predominantly a backyard affair—has now stepped up with nearly all farms operating at a calibre similar to that of commercial operations. Nowadays, rarely you would see small raisers sowing corn grains to feed the chickens roaming around their backyard and housing them in bamboo or wood-made cages. Minute operators now house their birds in modern fabricated domiciles and fed those using calibrated feeders and waterers. The evolution, according to pundits, is caused by tremendous competition in the market as well as the fast-paced and ever changing lifestyle of consumers.

Rolly Lagaya, owner of Lagaya Farms in San Jose, Batangas is happy to be a part of the sector’s revolution. An engineer by profession, he has established his farm together with his parents in 1975 as a mere family business. Started with 500 heads, the farm has now 200,000 birds in tow and producing 175,000 eggs per day. “Our farm’s expansion has been continuous. Whenever there’s a new technology, we always adapt it. We were the first farm in Batangas that has elevated the poultry houses. Unlike other farmers, we are always open to new technologies. We love new discoveries.”

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His work as a government employee didn’t stop Benjamin R. Lao from pursuing his first love, which is farming. In fact, he plans to retire early to concentrate on his farm in Eman, a barangay of Bansalan, Davao del Sur.

“My first love is farming,” this Gawad Saka 2008 national awardee for coconut farming told the press corps of the Department of Agriculture (DA) Region VI. After all, his parents were both farmers and he grew up in a surrounding where people were planting rice, corn, and several other crops.

The Lao family owns about 40 hectares of land. In 1998, his mother divided the land equally among the eight children.

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While many have done a good talk on how agriculture can contribute to peace and development in Mindanao, a couple in the island has done a very good work – they have made rebels and their families farm.

They are Drs. Edwin and Rosafe Hondrade. They started the Pagkain Para sa Masu (PPSM), a long-time government project that aims to help the poor in Mindanao, particularly ex-rebels Survive the war by teaching them backyard gardening and other farm ventures.

It is maintained by the Technical Cooperation Project 4, or the Rice-based Farming Systems and Training Support Program for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which is a collaborative project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries ARMM, and PhilRice.

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Whatever we dream about, will remain a dream if we are unable to convert this to a plan of action.

To own a piece of farm land is a dream for many, especially those living in urban centers. City business executives who toil in the asphalt jungle can but make a sigh and wish for a greener scenery.

Savoring the serene and peaceful rural environment is an alternative to the daily grind of earning a living in the metropolis. Raising a few farm animals, a vegetable garden plot, a small fishpond, a few fruiting trees, are parts of the vision.

It is an option or an escape avenue to those who can afford such an alternative. But to many, working on a piece of land is not an option but a must to earn a living and support the needs of a (growing) family.

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There is really no place like home, especially if there are more business opportunities there than in other places.

Elizar Gelasan has realized this when he returned to his hometown in Brgy. Daan Banua, Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental to farm. The life he had in Manila was hard and did not bring opportunities he had hoped for.

For three years, this agriculture graduate of Negros Occidental College worked as a factory worker in Manila. He became a merchandiser after he quit his job. Because he is the fourth eldest among his 10 siblings and the only one who has been able to graduate from college, he has been the head of family since their father died. Unfortunately for Elizar, his salary was never enough to support his family, leaving him no choice but to go back to his hometown to try his luck in agriculture.

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Helen’s Farm in Joaquin Biao, Calinan district, Davao City, had become a run-down 30-hectare farm after more than two decades of continued use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The soil had become acidic and the cacao trees that were about 20 years old had become sickly. The trees had few small yellowish leaves and they yielded very few fruits, most of them damaged by pod borers. The soil was virtually dead because the beneficial microorganisms had been killed by the chemicals.

That’s how Andry Lim described his family’s farm which he was assigned to manage starting 2001. Previously, he was working for a tribal mission foundation that conducted community development activities among the tribes in Mindanao, helping them earn a living Andry and Joji Lim with fruitful cacao tree. from farming.

His taking over the management of Helen’s Farm gave him an opportunity to put into practice what he loves to call Natural Farming that he learned while he was connected with the tribal mission foundation. He had the good fortune of attending a seminar on natural farming in 1997 conducted by Dr. Cho Hayn Yu, a Korean natural farming expert who was invited to Davao by a Korean missionary.

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To help its farmers adopt appropriate farm models for increased productivity, the municipal government of Barotac Viejo, Iloilo has bought and developed a hilly, forested land into a demonstration farm.

Called the Integrated Farm System (IFS) Demonstration Farm, this 4-hectare site that was once barren and populated with cogon and hagonoy now showcases various farm technologies for dryland farming, wetland farming, livestock raising, and ornamental gardening.

TECHNOLOGIES FOR DRYLAND FARMING
One of the dryland farm technologies that the farm management team has demonstrated is the Assisted Natural Regeneration Technology.

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Nestled among lush ricefields and the bamboo forest hills in Jala-Jala, Rizal, a 60-hectare farmland of the FMJ Foundation sits before the shimmering expanse of the Laguna Lake.

Come June this year, some 40 Filipino youth will call this farm both “school” and “home” as they study to become agri-entrepreneurs through the MFI Farm Business Institute’s Farm Business School.

The Farm Business School has been a long-standing dream for Jose Rene C. Gayo, group head and trustee-in-charge of MFI-FBI.

“I have always believed that a program that prepares students for agri-entrepreneurship is very much needed in the country. It is an unfortunate fact that majority of agriculture graduates – including those from the agribusiness program – do not end up in agribusiness. On the other hand, there is also a dire need for well-trained manpower for agribusiness management,” Gayo explains.

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An industrious Thai family relied on science and sound management to transform a small rice mill into one of Southeast Asia’s most high tech piggery farms.

Ratchaburi, Thailand — At first glance, the whole land area looks like a series of uniform concrete houses much like what one sees in middle class Philippine subdivisions. But it doesn’t take much time to figure out what’s inside those houses for the overpowering stench of pig manure is the ultimate giveaway. We were told that there are more than 6o houses, each one of those can accommodate 1,200 pigs. By the time they reach the marketable size of 120 kgs, the pigs are sold to local Thai supermarkets.

That is of course a very simplistic way of getting ahead of the whole story. Truth to tell, Udomdach farm, one of the many farms we visited in the recently concluded VIV Asia Agri Journalist Program, is an interesting tale of how a Thai family relied on science, government support and sound management to transform a once small rice mill into one of Southeast Asia’s most high tech piggery farms.

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In the mountainous province of Kalinga, there’s a plateau blessed with rich land and resources. The local folks of Tabuk are very fortunate to have established their rice-based farms there, but a farmer in Barangay Bulo is luckier.

Besides having a bountiful harvest, thanks to the fertility of the land, Teodoro Kub-ao is nominated for the prestigious Gawad Saka Award in RiceBased Farming in the provincial level for his excellent farming practices.

Teodoro and his family chose to live in a farm land about 20 kilometers away from Bulanao proper. And it seems that they made right choice for right now he and his family are living a peaceful and satisfying life in his 10-hectare farm.

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The study noted that several factors contribute to postproduction losses at the farm level. Among them are poor cultural management practices. For instance, weeds made harvesting difficult because it cover corn ears; harvesters would definitely miss these hidden corn ears. Moreover, intercropping corn with coconuts resulted in late maturity of corn and harvesters, of course, would leave the immature ears.

In Banga, South Cotabato, harvesting of immature corn results in high shelling losses because immature ears have high moisture content and soft cobs are easily crushed during shelling, resulting in high incidence of unshelled grains. Immature corn kernels are also more prone to breakage. Unfavorable weather conditions normally caused lodging of corn stalks, making harvesting more tedious for harvesters.

Losses are also caused by old and antiquated shelling machines. This is because many unshelled kernels remained attached to the cobs after it passed through the sheller. This is aggravated by lack of dryers. In Isabela drying is done on the highway resulting in heavy spillage because vehicles blow away the grains as they pass by.

Other causes of yield loss include harvesting practices, inept laborers, insufficient training of sheller operators, poor design and maintenance of drying pavement, and varietal characteristics of corn.

Farmers who transplant and direct seed rice may practice controlled irrigation to save water and farm inputs such as oil, fuel, and labor for water pumps without reducing yield.

A technology bulletin of PhilRice (Philippine Rice Research Institute) that will soon come out of the press states that from land preparation to the hardening of grains, Filipino farmers usually use 3,000 to 4,000 liters of water to produce a kilogram of rice.

However, rice consumes only – about 2,000 liters of water to produce a kilo of rice at 100 cavans per hectare. This amount is equivalent to 10 drums full of water.

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Many farmers are losing their chance to benefit from the nutrients in farm wastes like rice straw since they keep burning them right after threshing. These farmers don’t realize that they can get back a good amount of nutrients from rice straw if only they decompose the biomass after the harvest season.

In areas where two crops of rice are grown in a year and rice straw has to be disposed before the next crop, farmers need not worry on how to do it.. A massive information campaign should be launched to teach farmers on how not to waste their farm wastes.

Moreover, LGU officials are not enforcing the Clean Air Act, they are not doing anything to prohibit the burning of biomass (rice straw, grasses, corn stover). It also rests on LGU officials to campaign for the utilization of farm biomass as soil nutrient sources and enforce laws prohibiting burning.

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In many low-lying areas in San Antonio, Nueva Ecija, rice farms are not cultivated during the wet season because of flood water from neighboring towns and provinces normally come together in these areas. In many instances floodwater is at least a meter high for no less than a week and hence, transplanted seedlings are already rotten when the water subsides.

Among the town’s 16 barangays, 7 have been identified by a team of Filipino researchers as low-lying areas, which serve as catch basin of neighboring municipalities, Tarlac, Pampanga, and Zambales during the wet season. Water depth reaches 1.5 meters, thereby making farmers despondent in producing rice.

Farmers stubbornly plant rice in these areas, hoping against hope that their crop would survive possible flood. In some instances, their crops barely survive floodwater and their yields are low as they are still to find a variety that may be able to survive submergence.
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