Agriculture Business Week

For over nine years in the food processing business, Crispin Muyrong Jr and his wife Ma. Luz, owners of Sunlight Foods Corporation in Marikina City, have considered ubi as their bread and butter This rootcrop, which is valued for its purple-colored tuber, is a much sought-after ingredient in cakes, pastries, halo-halo, ice cream and other delicacies which make up a big chunk of the local food industry.

Crispin, a mechanical engineer, and Ma. Luz, a food technologist, have seen the big potential of ubi in food processing as they learned that fruit processing makes up 35 percent of the food processing pie followed by bakery products at 25 percent. So, in 2000 they decided to quit their respective jobs and focused on making products that the bakery sector needs.

Crispin noticed that there was an abundant supply of ubi in his home province of La Union, so he took advantage of this and processed the tubers into puree using the processing equipment he himself designed. Besides, he thought that he could help ubi growers in the area earn extra income by encouraging them to sell their produce to him.

(more…)

Posted on October 4th, 2010 under Entrepreneurs, Other Crops. Tags: Entrepreneur, Rootcrop, Ubi, Yam. Comments: 17

Perhaps, one way of helping Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala achieve his goal of stopping rice importation after three years is to grow more camote and more people shifting from rice to eating camote.

That will not only help us attain rice self-sufficiency, it could also result in more healthy Filipinos. Ask our good friend Dr. Wilfredo Yap, an expert in aquaculture, who noticed with alarm last October (he was then 63) that his fasting blood sugar (FBS) had shot up to 160 mg per deciliter (mg/dl). His blood pressure went up to 150 over 100.

When we met him last April during a forum at the MFI Foundation, he was ecstatic in telling us that camote was responsible for lowering his blood pressure to the normal level of 120 over 80, sometimes 110 over 80 in just a few weeks of eating camote instead of rice. We asked him to write about how he did it and we promised to publish it in the Agriculture Magazine. He only wrote the article after we saw him again last June at a gathering at the Gawad Kalinga project in Angat, Bulacan.

(more…)

Posted on August 9th, 2010 under Other Crops. Tags: Camote, Hypertension, Rootcrop, Sweet Potato. Comments: 5

Most of Marinduque’s agricultural area were utilized for rice and corn production to meet the need of its growing population. This, however, is not the only solution, for the shortage of rice and corn. The people there could grow rootcrops like tugui (Dioscorea esculenta) as an alternative staple and, more importantly, as another source income.

This is the essence of the research findings of three students of Marinduque State College. Grace Lacdao, Michelle Mendiola and Ria Aiza Jalimbawa studied the potential of tugui as a raw material for cracker chips and pastillas production.

Who would think that this rootcrop, which belongs to the yam family, has hairy kidney-liked leaves, and rich in carbohydrates and vitamins, could be utilized for such’? Well, nothing is impossible for those who are resourceful and creative like these three students.

(more…)

Posted on February 14th, 2009 under Other Crops. Tags: Rootcrop, Tugui. Comments: 2