Agriculture Business Week

Bongabon, Nueva Ecija — Residents of the country’s onion-growing capital last week began making their annual Sibuyasan Festival in a subdued and apprehensive mood. The town’s farmers are facing the most difficult situation in their history. But two ladies – Mayor Amelia Gamilla and municipal agriculturist Lucena Ceña – are helping them not to lose heart. The two leaders headed the celebration and highlighted it with the graduation of 143 farmers from a training course that taught onion growers to reduce production costs and considerably increase yield by planting hybrid varieties to enable them to compete with legally and illegally brought-in onions.

“We have faced critical problems in the past,” the mayor told the graduates and other farmers gathered at the Bongabon Multi-purpose Hall, “but these were all caused by nature – typhoons, floods, pest infestations, and the like, and we were able to recover from them. But it’s entirely different this time because our problem at present, sad to say, is man-made.”

Just before the graduation program started, the hall had been abuzz with news that smuggled onions had come in via Dingalan port in neighboring Aurora province and, adding insult to injury, the illegal shipment had allegedly been deposited in a Nueva Ecija warehouse. Meanwhile, in Bongabon and other onion-producing towns, harvests are peaking. Consequently, onion farmgate price is at an all-time low.

(more…)

Agri trailblazer Vicente Lim has always espoused the importance of marketing in agriculture.

The scorching heat of summer is on! But the rains of sunnier are something we did not expect. Although PAGASA recently warned us about the upcoming La Nina phenomenon.

I remember when the big narra tree in my house bore flowers, it is January, and it has been so for decades. The narra tree flowered first week of April this year. What does it mean? Is this the climate change everybody is talking about?

(more…)

Friday, March 13, 2009, Bongabon, Nueva Ecija–this was truly an extraordinary day for the onion farmers.

Starting as early as 4 o’clock in the morning of Friday, March 13, 2009, visitors from the Bureau of Agriculture and Research (BAR), the Metro Manila Fresh Food Dealers Association (MMFFDA) and Foundation for Resource Linkage and Development (FRLD), together with people from the National Onion Growers Cooperative Marketing Association (NOGROCOMA) officials and staff left Manila for Bongabon, Nueva Ecija. We were joined by representatives from Region III. No less than the Regional Director, Engr. Redentor Gatus, High Value Commercial Crop (HVCC) Regional Coordinator Fernando Lorenzo and staff, HVCC National Coordinator Dr. Rene Espino, Agriculture Marketing Assistance Service (AMAS) William Valdez, Post Harvest Training and Research Center’s (PHTRC) Pearl Nuevo and more than 150 farmer-members of NOGROCOMA and KASAMNE and other barangays from Laur and Bayambang, Pangasinan attended. Twelve (12) farmers from Pangasinan led by Rodrigo Lajera and Pablo de Vera joined the meeting. We all spent the day together.

The field trip was a learning experience. NOGROCOMA Farmer Nardo Francisco harvested his crop. Onion stacks of shiny yellow granex onions comparing farmers’ practice and scientific application of new technology. Offhand, preliminary results show that farmers practice used 2o bags of fertilizer per hectare. Scientists only used lo bags or 50%. Farmers sprayed insecticide and herbicide 12 times while scientists only sprayed four times or 75% less.

(more…)

PGMA traced the lessons learned from the 1930 depression to the 1997 financial crisis and the role of global initiatives vis-a-vis our local cooperative banks

I recently attended the 75th birthday of Congresswoman Leonila V. Chavez. The affair coincided with the Butil Farmers’ Day. No less than PGMA graced the occasion. The theme is “Bagong Magsasaka para sa Bagong Panahon.” After a short but substantive introduction by Ms. Chavez, the President traced the lessons learned from the 1930 depression to the 1997 financial crisis and the role of global initiatives vis-a-vis our local cooperative banks. The track of self – reliance by coop banks started by the group Of Butil is a good strategy Its scholarship, health and education program for farmers’ children speaks of a long term proactive practice that truly made a difference. The President said that her administration’s strategy is “Palakasin any Ekonomiya.- Through job creation, livelihood, infrastructure- in tandem with the millennium development goals like poverty alleviation, hunger mitigation and health improvement prepared our country for the global crisis and financial meltdown.

Before going to Butil’s Farmers’ Day, the President talked with Brunei’s Sultan Bolkiah to support the Philippine initiative to insure cash flows of Asian countries by setting up a fund. Asian countries include Japan, China, etc. Sultan Bolkiah promised to support this initiative. It was altogether an inspired speech. She thanked Butil and all farmers for feeding the Filipino nation and for leading the way for the economic empowerment of farmers.

(more…)

More and more entrepreneurs are getting into the malunggay bandwagon, They are processing the leaves into value-added products.

One family who is into the business of producing malunggay powder is that of Jose Manalo, owner of Life Pure Wellness, a corporation based in Quezon City. The family has long been exporting native onions to countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hongkong. They usually had rejects which they made into onion powder. The problem was that there were not enough rejects to process the whole year round.

Then they discovered the potentials of malungay with its varied nutritive contents. They did their own research and then went into malunggay powder production in 2007. The beauty about malunggay is that it is available throughout the year.

(more…)

Wearing a grim face, Andres Savella looks around his 1,000-square meter onion field. Disheartened, he tells himself that there’s no solution to his problem. A certain kind of insect feeds inside the onion leaves, and no amount of insecticide can kill it.

The problem of this 62-year-old farmer is the onion leafminer, a yellowish insect with a black spot on its back is suspected to have been accidentally introduced in the Philippines through imported cut flowers, according to Dong Arida, supervising research specialist at the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice). The insect was first collected in 1997 from onion fields in Central Luzon by Dr. Sonja J. Scheffer of the Agriculture Research Service, US Department of Agriculture. Based on laboratory-reared flies that she collected, Scheffer identified the leafminer as Liriomyza trifolii (Burgess).

The larvae of the insect eat the inner portion of the leaves, and by the time the mines are noticed, the leafminer larvae are already well protected by the leaf cuticle from insecticidal spray.

(more…)

Experiment shows that drip irrigation in onion can increase yield by as much as four times. This could make onion farming more competitive in the face of cheap imports.

Onion farming has become very erratic, says 44-year-old Joseph Eugenio of San Jose City, Nueva Ecija, who has been growing the crop for at least 20 years. One year, the price may be high but at other times, the price could be below production cost. The fumigate price in San Jose last April 3, for instance, was P6 per kilo. At this rate, if one is using the old traditional method of growing onion, the farmer could hardly break even. Thus, one has to try unproved techniques to increase production so one could make a profit.

Thus, when Eugenio was asked by Netafim, the Israeli drip irrigation company, to try the drip system, he did not hesitate to adopt the technology. He planted 400 grams or one can of Red Pinoy seeds in 2,000 square meters using drippers supplied by Netafim.

(more…)

The dynamic tandem of teachers and farmers is the key to the competitiveness of our local onion industry.

It was a windy day in Magiti, Bongabon, Nueva Ecija. The Sierra Madre mountain stood still at the backdrop of well-tilled onion farms ready to be planted. It was a beautiful sight to see how farmers have gone. The farms are well prepared with fine-sandy loam soil. In the past, the soil is usually stony with big chunks, of soil–obviously not tilled enough. Because there was no competition, it was a protected market where farmers reigned supreme. It was always a farmers’ market. Now globalization came and took all the protection away. In 1995, we started our tie-up with IPM-CRSP to prepare our farmers for globalization. That was 14 years ago and still nothing happened when China took over our markets.

The scientists were counting the leaf-miners of the onion plants. They discussed seriously to tell the farmers that at such numbers – the onion plants can still tolerate the leaf-miners. The scientists then told the farmers how to prepare the plants so that the leaf miners will not seriously affect the plants. This is one of the critical interventions being done with scientists from the University of the Philippines, Los Banos (UPLB). Did you know that if you use trichogramma, a strip of wasp (”putakti”) can wipe out cutworms, and eventually a scourge of onion farm? A strip of wasp only costs P2.50. And you need only 32 strips per hectare or 78.00/hectare versus thousands of pesos for pesticides expenses. Each wasp is 1 mm. which is not visible to the naked eye. The wasp will lay eggs on the cutworm. The cutworm will eat the eggs and no larvae or butterfly will live. See the wonders of nature!

(more…)

Almost all our cooked foods have that distinct flavor of onions filling our tastebud.  It is hard to imagine missing that distinctively pungent smell and taste on our sautés, soups, and other cuisine.

Chopping it might bring a tear to our eyes but we cannot afford trading these tears for a blunt flavor of our food. Our kitchen would not be that exciting and delightful as it used to be.

Onion, scientifically known as Allium cepa, comes from the Latin word unio for “single” or “one” as the onion plant produces a single bulb compared to garlic, that produces many small bulbs.

(more…)