Last Thursday, I attended another UPSE Alumni Association (UPSEAA) Boardroom Lectures, the speaker was fellow UPSE
alumni, Ignacio "Iggy" Sison, the Chief Corporate Officer of Del Monte Pacific Ltd (DMPL). The lecture was held at their office in BGC, Taguig City.
Iggy discussed their firm's many sustainability projects, details here,
https://www.delmontephil.com/sustainability
Here Iggy getting the Certificate of Appreciation from UPSEAA President, Jeffrey Ng. Both are from batch 1986, along with VP Leni Robredo.
Towards the end of his lecture, Iggy showed photos of their wide pineapple plantation in Bukidnon, their big tractors, pesticide sprayer, drone, etc. Successful corporate farming,
science-based including having plant geneticists and agronomists, having
economies of scale. They don't own even a single hectare, the whole 26k+ hectares are under long term
lease from many small landowners in the province. This points to a future corporate rice and corn
farming, veggies and animal farming in the country.
I own a 2nd hand, small
rotor tractor in Pangasinan for rent. A hand tractor works faster than carabao
tilling by at least 5x, a rotor tractor works at least 5x faster than a hand
tractor. Rotor operator says the small plots make the work slower, he has to
make slow turns on edges, reverse, forward to another edge. An hectare of rice
field is sometimes divided into 10 small plots, depending on elevation. That's
small or micro farming.
Corporate farming will change these, huge straight plots
for many hectares, use big rotor tractors that can work at least 20x faster
than a hand tractor, farming costs go down, harvest and productivity go up,
rice prices can significantly go down even without rice imports from TH, VN.
Not that I will go into corporate farming, am just a
micro entrepreneur. But I will support big rich guys and companies going into
corporate farming. Like what Del Monte does -- lease long term from small
landowners, hire them, give them good pay, private but free education for their
kids, private but free hospital, community services, etc. Win win for all,
except perhaps for local and national politicians who will be unhappy to see
more self reliant citizens, less dependent on them.
Sugarcane farming in Hda Luisita, Tarlac, even in my province Negros Occ., they are not in the corporate farming league, more of individual proprietorship and
partnership, and not integrated to direct customers. Sugarcane goes straight to
sugar milling companies, where profit is larger,
Another fellow UPSE alumni but not in the UPSEAA viber group, Reuel R. Hermoso, commented in my fb wall where I discussed Iggy's lecture. He wrote:
... Over the years, we've seen how the interest of younger
people in agriculture seems to have waned. CARP with its land-to-the-tiller
slogan looks good on paper and for the generation that actually tilled the
land. But that generation is starting to die out, and their children are no
longer interested in farming. It's the succession issue that DAR seemed to be
trying to address but really couldn't because they were bent on their land
distribution targets -- support through market access, R&D/extension, credit
and financing, farming inputs, machinery, and infrastructure were there but
were never enough to meet the beneficiaries' requirements.
It's really an uphill battle for many of them -- as well
it should be. If the market is the basis for agricultural production, then
naturally the less efficient, less productive ones will be left biting the
dust. Majority of them will have to slide down to subsistence farming, and we
don't like that. It doesn't help our poverty reduction targets, especially
rural poverty.
In the end, I think corporate farming will be the only
way to go. I just got back yesterday from Tugueguerao, and Dr. Arnold Elepaño
(Dean of the College of Agricultural Engineering in UP Los Baños) and I made a
side trip to the Isabela-La Suerte Rice Milling Corporation in San Manuel,
Isabela. They have arguably the most modern rice processing facilities in the
country, with a control room where just a couple of folks manage the flow of
palay feedstock through the dehusking, sorting, silo storing, and eventual
bagging of rice. They want to involve themselves in the upstream of farm
production, because the present scale and volume of production is just too
small for the level and amount of throughput that their system could optimally
handle -- and it's HUGE. As in, boilerplate capacity is good as advertised! And
with rice farming systems in this country still basically stuck in the mid-20th
century, they have to literally grab the old carabao by the horns and pull it
into 21st century, with upscale mechanization for tillers, transplanters,
harvesters, and combines. I won't be surprised if AI/robotics are on the
horizon.
Thanks for the great lecture again, Iggy.
Photos above from UPSEAA fb page.
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See also:
UPSEAA lecture 1, Robina Gokongwei-Pe, July 20, 2019
UPSEAA lecture 2, DTI Sec. Mon Lopez, July 21, 2019
UPSEAA lecture 3, Tito Ortiz, July 22, 2019
UPSEAA lecture 4, Johanna Chua, August 4, 2019.
