Farmer heroes featured in Agri Magazine
Atotal of 35 outstanding farmers producing vegetables and other high-value crops are featured in the November 2017 issue of Agriculture Magazine published by the Manila Bulletin and edited by yours truly.
The 35 Farmer Heroes are recipients of special recognition from EastWest Seed on its 35th anniversary this month of November. The company which was founded in 1982 by Simon N. Groot of the Netherlands and Benito M. Domingo, a successful agri businessman from Manila who, among other things, is a pioneer in distributing imported seeds of onion and other vegetables.
East-West Seed has gone a long way in developing outstanding varieties of tropical vegetables that include onion, ampalaya, tomato, squash, papaya, sweet corn, sitao, patola, upo, peppers, and others. From its operations in the Philippines, the company has spread its reach to other countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and other Asean member countries, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China, Africa and down to the Latin Americas.
In an earlier column in this page, we featured a few of the awardees who have had limited formal education – elementary and not beyond high school – but who are nevertheless very successful in their farming. They have become rich because of the high-yielding varieties developed and distributed by East-West worldwide.
Here are some more of the interesting Farmer Heroes of East-West. We are particularly fascinated by the story of Leonila Sugarol, a 52-year-old lady farmer of Tayod, Liloan, Cebu, an elementary school graduate who specializes in planting the Kangkong Tsina distributed by East-West.
She grows the crop on just 2,500 square meters. In one year, she can plant 350 kilos of kangkong seeds from