THE FUTURE IS IN HIGH-VALUE COOPERATIVE FARMING
MANY PEOPLE lament the current local market system for food trade, in which farmers sell their products to an often-convoluted chain of traders and resellers. This increases the cost of food without adding value, and results in greater food wastage due to the use of inappropriate post-harvest technologies. But in some parts of the Philippines, there is a positive trend, in which groups of smallholder farmers grow incredibly high-value crops under a financial consolidator. Under this arrangement, each member is treated as a partner, and profit is shared fairly among all.
Just ask Randy Danor, 30, of Nueva Ecija. For ten years, he has been an avid grower of Jade Lady honeydew in his tiny property of only 5,000 square meters. Normally, honeydews need a large day-to-night temperature difference to become sweet, but Jade Lady has the unique characteristic of being able to store sweetness in its fruits regardless of temperature conditions. It is this reliability of sweetness and quality which makes Danor a fan of Jade Lady.
He also notes its hardiness against very wet conditions, making it a good year-round crop. Most important of all is that Danor can produce, with care, around nine to ten tons of Jade Lady in his tiny piece of land.
Danor is just one of many farmers under the wing of a mysterious benefactor, whose identity he and his fellow farmers fiercely protect. This person organizes and consolidates the Jade Lady harvest from all of the farmers working with them—and almost all of these are small-holder farmers averaging only a few thousand square meters of farmland. Yet it is exactly this limitation on land that allows each farmer to put greater focus on growing high-quality Jade Lady—a high level of quality that may otherwise be lost in a larger scale production.
Danor says he can sell his harvest for around thirty pesos per kilogram of Jade Lady that passes his benefactor’s quality standard, and up to forty pesos per kilogram during the off-season, as it is much harder to get fruits that fit the sweetness and size standard during the rainy season. The incredibly high standard is due to his benefactor’s customer base, which are often high-class hotels and restaurants.
He must ensure his fruits are always around 1.2 to 1.5 kilograms (kg) each, which