25 YEARS OF HARBEST
“HARBEST ACTUALLY STARTED FROM SEEDS,” says Harbest Agribusiness Corporation President Arsenio “Toto” Barcelona. As one of the country’s leading agriculture companies celebrates its 25th year anniversary this month, Barcelona looks back on the successes and challenges that has made Harbest the company that it is today.
Before Harbest was incorporated in 1997, Barcelona ran a stationery business. He then tried his hand at aquaculture supplies. A trip to Taiwan in 1996 to visit his friend who worked for Known You Seed introduced him to the idea of focusing on seeds and planting supplies. “They sent their managers here to scout and then they found that it’s time to really boost the market,” Barcelona says.
More than just selling seeds, Harbest focused on confidence building: teaching farmers how to cultivate the seeds, and later, how to make good profit from selling the harvests.
“At that time, the musk melon was selling at P5, sometimes P3 per piece. We taught them that you can sell it at P20. We made them do taste tests and the market loved it... in fact, it reached up to P40, so the farmers were so delighted. They said, let’s plant more. And that was the start,” Barcelona says. “We introduced different varieties and Known You was guiding us all throughout.” Barcelona says that one of his best memories was seeing their produce like Red Lady papaya, super sweet corn, and honeydew melons appear on supermarket shelves. “Another good aspect is that we saw farmers making money,” he adds. “This is why I always say ‘quality fruits always come from quality farmers.’” Success wasn’t instant. Barcelona says it took five years for the company to really take off. From seeds, they began to sell items like mulching film and seedling trays, which at that time weren’t familiar to the market yet. He recounts that their first order of 20 rolls of mulching film and one box of 200 pcs seedling trays took more than a year to sell. It was a while before farmers realized the benefit of using items like these to further increase the quality of their harvests.
“I think that’s one of the most important lessons we learned. That we have to make the farmers make money, so we have to teach them,” Barcelona says.
Other organizations began noticing Harbest’s thrust on education. Government agencies and private companies began partnering with Harbest to hold training programs for both longtime partner farmers and folks looking to switch to agriculture. “On the side, we still kept on doing free extension work with the farmers,” Barcelona says, adding that Harbest’s staff are used to getting calls from farmers asking for help with troubleshooting. “One thing that we really emphasize is the spirit of service.” Harbest’s product lines have expanded through the years, and now include greenhouses, drip irrigation, hand tractors, bonsai supplies, and drones. “Now our thrust is to develop more products for modern technologies, especially AI, artificial intelligence, adapted to farming,” Barcelona says. “We are still looking for products and technologies to make farming easier for farmers and [give them] better income.”
They have also continued developing their team, and because of this have been able to expand to Cagayan de Oro during the pandemic. They are also opening a tissue culture laboratory in Rizal. “Because [you] don’t depend on seeds… you can have disease-free planting material just from the tissue. All the materials that we use are locally available,” he adds.
In gratitude for 25 years of operation, Barcelona is also establishing the Harbest Foundation. “One of the main thrusts that we are looking into is to address malnutrition among rural children, “Barcelona says, “It’s to empower them to have their own food garden.”
Harbest Agribusiness Corporation has come a long way since its beginning as a seed distributor. Not only is it a successful agribusiness, but through partnerships with key government and private initiatives, it continues to be a key player in agriculture development nationwide.
For Barcelona, success in agribusiness can be broken down into a formula. “Successful agribusiness always starts from science. 10% of your success is [science and] technology, 50% is your [execution and] experience… [and] 40% is character, because if you are lazy or give up easily, you won’t be successful,” he says. And he should know. After all, it continues to be the guiding force behind Harbest.