Agriculture Business Week

You would think that 2005 Davao del Sur Outstanding Farmer, 2006 Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resources Research and Development Magsasakang Siyentista, 2008-Department of Agriculture (DA) Outstanding Farmer, 2009 Micro-Entrepreneur of the Year, and DA Outstanding Farmer in the Organic Farming Category multi-awardee Benjamin “Ben” R Lao would fear nothing when it comes to farming.

But he is very grateful that he planted nitrogen-fixing species on his farm such as Flemingia macrophylla, Desmodium rensonii, and Indigofera anil in order to help restore the fertility of the soil. That’s because the soil had become so infertile, not even cogon grass would grow on it. There were coconut trees growing there which yielded 400-600 nuts every three months; after the nitrogen-fixing species were planted, yield increased dramatically to 15,000 nuts per quarter. In addition, the nitrogen-fixers are also good forage for his livestock; the legumes contain as much as 16 percent crude protein.

What caused the soil’s infertility in the first place? Soil erosion. “I am thankful to the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC) for helping me realize (the importance of protecting) my soil from erosion,” Ben said in an exclusive interview. “By doing so, I was able to increase my coconut production. In addition, the leaves of the various nitrogen-fixing species even help restore the fertility of my soil.”

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Posted on February 20th, 2013 under Farming. Tags: Farmer, Farming. Comments: None

The province of Nueva Ecija is widely recognized as a rice granary, but some farmers now prefer to raise dairy carabaos rather than grow rice. Several farmers in Barangay Calabalabaan, Science City of Munoz, reason out that they derive more income from dairy farming than from rice production, as their farms are rainfed and rice is grown only once a year.

Take Marites, 31, and Danilo Avila, 39, who used to cultivate one hectare of rainfed farm for rice production. Although they don’t have any child, their income from growing rice was barely enough for both of them.

Marites even had to raise two swine fatteners every four months so that they would have cash to buy farm inputs. Her income from the fatteners, however, was very minimal because of the high cost of production. In addition to the cost of two piglets, P2,400, she also had to buy feeds. And yet she sold the pigs at only P4,000 each.

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Posted on August 31st, 2012 under Livestock, Rice. Tags: Carabao, Farmer, Rice, Ricefed. Comments: 1

Coffee farmer Quirica Cadava of Butuan province wakes up every dawn with so much enthusiasm. She has been counting the days until she could finally harvest the ripe coffee cherries with love and care. She smiles in content as she sees how her passion and dedication have resulted in a good harvest this year.

For Quirica Cadava of Tungao, San Mateo, Butuan City, the early morning sight of coffee cherries—all red, ripe and glistening as they hang from the dew-covered coffee trees, all awaiting harvest as the first pick of the season—is a source of wonder, hope and inspiration.

The coffee cherries represent not simply the fruits of her labor and care but also the chance for a better future for her family and relatives.

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Posted on January 8th, 2011 under Coffee, Farming. Tags: Butuan, Coffee, Farmer. Comments: 3

At 71, Jaime Tadeo has been living a colorful life. From being a government extension worker, he experienced being a communist, activist, convict, and given pardon.

Today, he is living a new, interesting life as an organic farmer. As aging cools his ardor and intransigence for the farmers’ cause, he realizes more threats to the rural community, and one major threat is climate change.

Tadeo believes that organic farming can mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. This is the reason why he joined another movement—a peaceful movement this time and that is Go Organic, Philippines.

It is a consortium of NGOs led by the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) and the La Liga Policy Institute (LLPI). Endorsed by the Department of Agriculture (DA) and Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), Go Organic promotes the use of organic fertilizers and pesticides.

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Posted on May 25th, 2010 under Farming, Organic. Tags: Farmer, Farming, Military, Organic. Comments: None

Submergence of crop has always been the biggest problem of farmers in low-lying areas. So farmers in these places usually plant less — or something not plant at all – during the wet season for fear of incurring huge loss.

Barangay Papaya is one of the low-lying towns in San Antonio, Nueva Ecija, and it unfortunately serves as the catch basin of neighboring municipalities. At the onset of the wet season almost 60 percent of the town’s ricefields are already submerged for more than a week, and water depth reaches 1.5 meters.

Farmers in Barangay Papaya are despondent as far as rice production is concerned. Alfonso Bayangat, for instance, left the 2.3-hectare rice farm of his children idle for four years as it had always been submerged during the wet season.

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Posted on July 17th, 2009 under Rice. Tags: Farmer, Rice, Ricefield. Comments: None

One important thing that farmers must keep in mind is that the key to successful technology adoption is to determine what practices are suitable for one’s farm.

Three farmers have exemplified this commendable ability when they adopted the PalayCheck system, a dynamic integrated crop management system that the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) promotes for increased rice yield.

A farmer-cooperator in the first demonstration trial on PalayCheck in 2006, Cipriano Claur of Luttuad, Diffun, Quirino has been completely receptive to PalayCheck since it was introduced to Luttuad farmers by PhilRice. This 46-year-old farmer followed all the eight key checks of the system and increased his yield from 6.3 tons per hectare (t/ha) to 9.1 t/ha, which was a 45 percent increase in grain yield.

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Posted on July 16th, 2009 under Rice. Tags: Farmer, PalayCheck, PhilRice. Comments: None

HIGHER YIELD
It is the higher yield of Bioseed 9909 that attracts farmers to plant it. For instance, from the same one-fourth hectare that Eddie Castilliero planted to Bioseed 9909 this year, he got only 26 cavans from another hybrid variety last year. He sold his harvest for only P14,000.

The variety that he had been planting for the last three years was easily affected by drought. “If it was not irrigated in 15 days, the plants already started to wilt. On the other hand, Bioseed 9909 is resistant to drought,” he said.

With Bioseed 9909, he got 2,287.5 kilograms of newly shelled grains, which he sold at P8 a kilo. Even with this low price, lie still obtained a net income of no less than P10,000 from one-fourth hectare. This means that his income was equivalent to P40,000 per hectare.

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Posted on July 5th, 2009 under Corn/Maize. Tags: Bioseed, Corn, Farmer, Maize. Comments: 1

The President of MFI and the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food has one simple and basic message: “let’s all go back to nature!”

As a corporate man and an officer of the Air Forces of the Philippines, Col. Alejandro Teves Escano wears many hats. He sits in the Board of various companies and NGOs, heads a lot of social, civic and religious groups and does a lot of volunteer work for developmental organizations. But the closest sector to Escano’s heart is the agricultural world. “This Js the area where we have the biggest potential to grow as a country,” he tells us. This is why part of his many projects is the Bais Family Farm School in which he oversees the training of young students into young agri-entrepreneurs.

A chemical engineer by profession, Col. Escano’s agri entrepreneurial endeavors have been the fulcrum of his being considered a stalwart in the area of business, particularly in the field of agro-industrial projects. Today, he is the President of the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food, Chairman for the Enhancement of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (SECAFF), which is the Industry Working Group (IWG) of TESDA for the Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Manufacturing Sector, Chairman of Bais Family Farm School, and President of the Meralco Foundation, Inc (MFI). Aside from this long string of positions, Escano is also consultant to several local and international companies.

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Posted on June 17th, 2009 under Farming. Tags: Farmer, Farming. Comments: None

Sometimes a misfortune can be a blessing in disguise. Just like what happened to Ramilito Barte, 44, of Brgy. Latucan, Sariaya, Quezon.

In 1994 he was victimized by an unlicensed recruiter to whom he gave supposed placement and other fees that totaled more than P100,000, much of it borrowed from other people at a high interest. He was promised a job at a factory in Taiwan that never materialized. Later, the recruiter could no longer be found and his borrowed money had gone with the wind. He never saw the recruiter again.

Since he could no longer go abroad, he sought employment at a coconut processing company where he was hired to separate the coconut meat from its shell. Then in 1996, while still employed as a factory worker, he started farming in the hope of earning additional income to pay for the money he borrowed for his supposed employment in Taiwan. He planted Casino eggplant on one-fourth hectare. Casino is a prolific variety developed by East-West Seed Company. It produced a bumper harvest and he grossed P 150,000. That was an eye-opener to him.

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Posted on June 11th, 2009 under Entrepreneurs, Farming, Vegetables. Tags: Farmer, Farming, Recruitment, Veggies. Comments: None

Although Jun is not an accredited seed grower, he can be as good, if not better than many seed growers because of his vast experience in PhilRice. He sells his harvest of PJ7 seeds at P1,200 per bag of 40 kilograms. He derives more income from selling seeds since the commercial price of palay is only P17 a kilo.

Jun is also lucky for having his wife, Leonora, work at a branch of the Land Bank of the Philippines in Ilagan. Last year, in his third season as a full-time farmer, Jun and his wife were able to buy a foreclosed property from Land Bank for only P170,000, which came solely from his farm income. The property is 5 hectares consisting of 4.5 hectares of corn land and 0.5 hectare of coconuts. One hectare of corn land and a half hectare of rice land were also mortgaged to him at P85,000 and P80,000, respectively. At present, Jun and Leonora already have 12.5 hectares-9 hectares of corn land and 3.5 hectares of rice land.

With an increasing farm area, Jun’s income has been also commensurately increasing. Take the 4.5 hectares of foreclosed corn land that they bought. In the first season, Jun harvested 430 bags of corn grains for a total 25,800 kilograms. At P10 per kilogram, his gross income was P258,000. This alone already gave him a monthly gross income of P50,000.

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Posted on June 10th, 2009 under Farming, Rice. Tags: Farmer, Farming, PhilRice, Rice. Comments: 1

After hopping from one job to another in three private companies and finally to the branch station of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) in Isabela, Lorenzo “Jun” Ballesteros finally decided to concentrate on farming two years ago. And he has no regrets for he has found his own niche after losing much in his farm while he was still at PhilRice.

Jun, 44, spent six years in three private companies where he said he learned his “business sense.” He also spent eight years at PhilRice where he was a site coordinator in the hybrid rice commercialization program for a number of years. During that period, he was helping farmers in Isabela and Cagayan establish their hybrid rice farms.

The farmers whom he helped train, many of whom are college graduates, were making great strides in their farming ventures. One of them is Col. Valfry Tabian of the Philippine National Police, a graduate of the Philippine Military Academy who has become a successful rice farmer, producing certified seeds and commercial rice. Professionals from the landed class in Cagayan have also been raking a great income from rice farming.

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Posted on June 9th, 2009 under Farming, Rice. Tags: Farmer, Farming, PhilRice, Rice. Comments: 1

Every time I visit my home province Negros Occidental, I reminisce the exciting moment of my childhood when my friends and I ran after passing trucks loaded with freshly cut sugarcane and each of us pulled out one. Our favorite was the purple-colored La Carlota. It was soft and juicy; just right for us to munch and skin as we, sit and hear ghost stories from another Toto.

I can still remember when my brother Lucio harvested his hectares of rabanos (radish). He got truckloads and the local market could not absorb even an eighth of it. So the rest had to be transported to nearby markets up to Bacolod City. I recall, too, when we ate with the sacadas, the migrant seasonal cane cutters from Panay. We feasted on mongo guisado with alugbati and strips of pork, and rice. It was fun eating with them and hearing their stories of adventure.

Those were the days when I got my early education on farming. Today, La Carlota sugarcane is a money-maker as it is processed into juice. The marketing of rabanos has to be done quickly and cheap due to oversupply. And the sacadas, whom the foreign press portrayed as oppressed, now earn better in Negros Occidental than in their home provinces.

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Posted on June 9th, 2009 under Farming. Tags: Education, Farmer, Farming, Harbest. Comments: 1

One outstanding farmer we met lately is a widow who could easily beat many male counterparts in the business of farming. She is 54-year old Lydia Lapastora of Yeban Norte, Benito Soliven, Isabela.

We met her at the media presentation on biotech crops under the auspices of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) headed by Dr. Emil Q. Javier, and the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech . Applications (ISAAA) represented by Dr. Randy Hautea. Lydia was invited to share her experiences in planting transgenic corn because she is an example of a farmer who is progressive because she readily adopts the latest technologies.

When transgenic corn, more popularly called GMO or genetically modified organism, was finally allowed to be commercially planted in the Philippines in 2005, Lydia was one of the first adoptors and has been growing the same two times a year (sometimes three times) on 10 hectares of farmland.

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Posted on June 1st, 2009 under Corn/Maize. Tags: Corn, Farmer, Farming, Maize. Comments: 7

SALT is considered a diversified farming system. Aside from the hedgerows, rows of perennial crops such as coffee, bananas, and citrus may be grown in areas occupied by corn. The annual crops are rotated: corn is followed by soybeans or peanuts and then followed again by corn. “In this way, a farmer has something to harvest every month throughout the year,” says Roy C. Alimoane, the current MBRLC director.

SALT started to change thousands of lives in Mindanao and attract national notice after its introduction in 1978. “The response was overwhelming,” said Warlito A. Laquihon, the former associate director of the center. “People come to the center not only to get a glimpse of the system but to undergo training as well.”

After the one-week training, Talabucon returned home and adopted the technology he learned from the MBRLC. He also adopted other livelihood technologies in his farm. Now, his farm is teeming with various crops. “I am now happy harvesting the fruits of my labor,” he said.

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Posted on May 30th, 2009 under Farming. Tags: Farmer, Farming, MBRLC. Comments: None