Harvest festival features veggies, farm machines
Athree-day harvest festival starts today and will end on Saturday at the Farm 2 of Agri-Tech Integrated Services Co. (ATISCO) in Brgy. Talaga, Tanauan City.
The event will feature a demonstration on the capabilities of Branson tractor from Korea using various land preparation equipment like rotavator, disc plow, levee maker, buck hoe and others. At the same time, the visitors will see for themselves the performance of various vegetable varieties and other high-value crops planted by participating seed companies that include Allied Botanical Corporation, Bayer Vegetable Seeds and East-West Seed.
The seed companies have planted their favorite varieties so the farmers can see for themselves how the hybrids fare under the conditions obtaining in Tanauan City, particularly Farm 2 of ATISCO.
ATISCO pioneers in a farming concept that starts with the production of various crops that are used by a captive market. The captive market consists of the 14,000 strong employees of Yazaki Torres Manufacturing Company in Calamba, Laguna.
It is a strategy that is hard to fail because the ingredients of success are all there. There is the improved technologies of production coupled with the sure market for the products produced by ATISCO which is a satellite company of Yazaki.
And what are the products that ATISCO is focusing on? One is rice. For this purpose, it has set up an operation in Oriental Mindoro where it has instituted a scheme where the company provides the technology and financing so the farmers will make money. Under the scheme, ATISCO has acquired the farm machines to reduce the cost of producing rice. These include Branson tractors from Korea and its attachments like plow, rotavator, rice planter, rice harvester and efficient compact mills to polish the grains.
The rice produced, for a start, is supplied to the Yazaki canteen which uses two tons of rice a week. In addition to that, rice is also sold through ATISCO’s market within the Yazaki compound where the employees can buy their household requirements at a price lower than those of similar quality in the market.
How will the farmers make money? Here is how. The farmers become contract growers of ATISCO. For instance, if the farmer has a two-hectare farm, ATISCO will buy the harvest at an agreed price of P15 per kilo of freshly harvested palay. The farmer is likely to make a profit because the cost of production is reduced compared to the cost usually incurred by the farmer using his old system.
The ATISCO system is like this. If the farmer agrees to become a contract grower and he does not have the money, he can avail of a R42,000-loan per hectare at 1% interest a month from Bangko Makiling. The loan covers the cost of land preparation, fertilizers and pesticides, harvesting and technical guidance by ATISCO.
As per actual experience in the past three seasons, the hybrid varieties that were planted yielded an average of 6 tons per hectare worth R90,000. That’s more than double the cost of production, so the farmer really makes money. After deducting the loan and the cost of money, the farmer is richer by about R40,000 per hectare in a growing cycle of four months.
The cost of production, according to Delima is just around R7 per kilo whereas the selling price is R15 per kilo. And that is the reason why more farmers have become contract growers of ATISCO. In the first season in 2014, there were only 45 hectares covered. But by the second cropping in 2015, the number of farmers have increased to cover 70 hectares. And by the third cropping in 2016, all of a sudden the covered area has increased to 300 hectares.
With the big production, Delima is not worried about marketing their rice. He said that there are more than a hundred big companies that are operating in the nearby Export Processing Zone. They are all potential customers.
Meanwhile, ATISCO aims to produce the vegetables needed by the Yazaki canteen and their internal market under a similar scheme. Vegetable growers can become contract growers with their harvests bought by ATISCO at a very favorable price.
By the way, today, the first day of the festival, DA Undersecretary for Agribusiness and High-Value Crops Evelyn Laviña, is one of the honored guests. She will be in the company of local government officials.
Aside from observing the crops grown in the farm, the visitors will be able to attend seminars on topics like good agricultural practices, peanut production, and insect pests management in vegetables.