Bulacan co-op receives DTI R.5-M grant
The Kooperatibang Pangkabuhayan ng Sta. Maria (Bulacan) can now intensify its food processing project with the R500,000 grant that it is about to receive from the Department of Trade and Industry. The documents are being finalized.
The co-op is engaged in contract growing of pigs and chickens with farmers not only in Bulacan but also in other provinces. To make sure there is a market for the contract growers, the co-op buys back the harvest of the growers which it processes into various meat products.
As of now, the co-op makes longganisa, tocino, tapa, chicken roll, chicken pop and other products. The processing is currently done manually. With the DTI grant, the processing will be automated and the quality of the products will also be significantly enhanced, according to Gil SP Garcia, co-op chairman.
He expects the production to be more than doubled in the coming months once the new facilities are installed. With the new processing machines, other livestock and poultry growers can avail of toll processing of their own meat products. Gil and his group are planning to process new products like shanghai roll with chicken and pork plus sweet potato as carrier.
Under the contract growing scheme, the co-op provides the grower with the weanlings which he can raise in improved growing pens floored partly with a mixture of rice hull and carbonized rice hull and partly with concrete. The pigs are not bathed and the pen does not need any washing with water until the fattened animals are marketed. With beneficial microorganisms, the pigpen is virtually without the usual foul odor in a piggery.
The co-op buys back the fattened pigs, some of which are processed into meat products while the rest is marketed in the local market. Under the scheme, when the fatteners are harvested, the cost of weanling and feeds are deducted. The remainder is shared by the co-op and the contract grower. The grower gets 60 percent of the profit while the co-op gets 40 percent.
The scheme has spread to many other places outside Bulacan. Contract growers are now found in Bataan, Zambales, Nueva Ecija, Quezon, Batangas and even Iloilo.
The pigs are fed with super premium feeds from Agrichexers, a feedmill also headed by Gil SP Garcia. The use of the premium ration results in pork that is preferred by viajeros and stallholders. The pork has thin fat, red in color and marbled. It means small fat layers are found inside the muscles, making the meat more tasty.
Because of the high quality of the meat, the co-op can sell the pork at par with the commercially fattened animals. Normally, traders often offer a lower price for pork raised in the backyard.
Normally, the contract grower gets a share of at least a thousand pesos from each pig that he fattened. Hence it is a win-win scheme for growers who don’t have enough capital to buy the weanlings and the feeds. He only has to provide the housing and the labor in raising the pigs.
QUAIL RAISING – Meantime, Agrichexers is intensifying its campaign to encourage farm families to get into quail production which is highly profitable. The company has been conducting free seminars on quail raising to show to the attendees how they can make money from quails.
Quails are advantageous to raise because they need a small capital to start with. The growing area is also very small. A 1,000-head flock can be accommodated in cages inside a garage. Quails also start laying eggs in just 35 to 45 days from hatching.
Quail pullets that are 24 days old cost an average of 24 pesos or two pesos per day. Quails have a high percentage of lay and the cost of producing an egg is about 70 to 75 centavos. Ex-farm each egg fetches a peso or more. Thus there’s a 25-30% profit margin. Not only small farmers are getting into quail-raising. A doctor-couple in Batangas has started their own commercial quail production, according to Gil.