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THE Primer
Farm School (PFS) will open on June 15 in San Jose City, Nueva
Ecija, with a simple aim: Let us export rice in three
years. If this appears to be too ambitious, let us make it
in four. In between the horrendous lack of rice, which
also causes the price of corn grits to soar, is the
attainment of rice self-sufficiency in three years.
Central to
this aspiration is the Rice Profit Protocol (RPP)
developed by inventor Alfonso G. Puyat and farmer Fernando
Gabuyo Jr.
What is
the RPP?
It is a
rice methodology that allows a dramatic increase in rice
yields with a minimal addition of inputs (slightly less
than P2,000) to the regular expenses now incurred in the
production in irrigated rice fields.
It may be
used on all rice varieties, although results will differ
according to rice-variety potential. These high yields are
sustainable and require just the same amount of fertilizer
as the regular rice-growing practice.
The
protocol involves three processes and their special
inputs:
1. Improve
soil texture and productivity by the on-site rapid
production of organic fertilizer from the unburn plant
residues, old roots and dry straw through the application
of Philor Xemas probiotic degrader.
2.Boost
the plant’s productivity by foliar application of Philo
ANAA, a plant-growth promotant and vitamin solution
together with chelated secondary and microelements that
immediately increase the plant’s overall growth rate, and
its rate of utilizing externally supplied plant-growth
inputs.
3.Apply
Philor X-R-C inputs-soluble silicon to reinforce plant
structure to minimize lodging. Additionally, the protocol
requires the practice of a 10-day cycle of intermittent
irrigation after the first week of rice-seedling
transplant.
Gabuyo, a
marine engineering graduate, served on an interisland ship
before turning full-time farmer. He has had a number of
awards as a farmer.
Puyat, son
of the late Senate President Gil Puyat, graduated with a
business administration degree at the University of the
Philippines. He took up his MBA at Wharton, and later
became a bank and insurance executive. But agricultural
and scientific research has been his passion since his
collegiate days, aside from photography.
What drew
Puyat’s attention to Gabuyo was the latter’s winning one
of the top prizes in the Bigante Higanteng Ani Award given
by Bayer Crop Science.
Gabuyo,
with a harvest of 221 cavans per hectare, was second only
to Eulogio Guira of Davao del Sur with 227.
Through
San Jose City agriculturist Rogelio Malunay, a link was
made between the inventor and the farmer.
In the
2005 dry-season planting, Gabuyo, using Puyat’s inputs and
methodology, harvested 337 cavans per hectare, 100 more
than the Mindanao champion. There was a successive
increase in yields: 346 in 2006, 354 in 2007.
In 2006
this writer suggested to Puyat and Gabuyo organizing a
training outfit or a school so that the RPP could be
spread nationwide. If a sizeable number of farmers
adopting the RPP could be documented, dissemination would
be faster.
Planting
rice never fun
Planting
rice is never fun, according to a song learned in grade
school. But a tinge of romance can still be attached to
it.
In April
2006 there was moonlight, no roses, but a plenitude of
rice sheaves. From late afternoon and then the fall of
evening up to daybreak, when the moonlight spread like a
pale yellow carpet on Gabuyo’s field, I helped pile the
rice sheaves for the threshing preparatory to the
measuring and weighing to be made in the afternoon of the
following day.
Extra
hands are hired in Nueva Ecija during the peak of harvest.
The same held true, was truer in Gabuyo’s field.
The hired
hands knew there was a scheduled measuring and weighing.
Haggling for higher wages, they started work late in the
morning, rested before noon, resumed work past 2 in the
afternoon.
Every hand
was needed to help pile the sheaves. All of us were tinted
with moonlight and, resting to the sound of irrigation
water, I thought of a training outfit or school. No name
came to mind. Primer only settled, like a homing
butterfly, this April. Primer would be an appropriate name
and it was the title of my column in the Philippine
Collegian many years ago.
It was the
recent rice crisis and the threat of traditional rice
exporters not to sell rice to the Philippines—softening
only after we agreed to buy rice at almost four times the
regular price—that prompted the decision to push through
with the school.
From
Misamis Oriental, where I joined the Higaonons from the
provinces of Agusan del Sur, Agusan del Norte, Misamis
Oriental and Bukidnon in their Domalondong, or tribal
gathering, to Cebu, where our members of the Toledo Green
Coconut Farmers Association covering the cities of Toledo
and Naga and the municipalities of Pinamungahan,
Aloguinsan,Barili, Balamban, Asturias and Tuburan are into
coconut replanting and intercropping (initially cacao), I
proceeded to Puyat’s house in Forbes Park.
We agreed,
difficulties, limitations and all, that it was time for us
to shed our anxieties and push through with the school.
Puyat and
I drove to
San Jose
City,
passing a cornfield in Pampanga where the corn with the
Puyat input was revealing more ears. We talked to Gabuyo
and his wife Erlinda. The consensus was that it was time
to do away with our trepidations. No one could be more
daunted by the task than we are.
The three
of us met with Councilor Resty Domingo, chairman of the
agriculture committee of the city council, and OIC city
agriculturist Amarillo. They said if we were that
determined, we have the blessings of Mayor Marivic Violago
Belena.
The format
of the school is very simple. The farmer-trainees will
work hands-on in Gabuyo’s farm and the farms of his
farmer-neighbors who have adopted the RPP. This will be
for a full planting season (four months) beginning June
15, with 30 to 60 participants. There will be another set
for the dry-planting season.
To
maximize their four-month stay, the farmer-trainees will
be taught vegetable gardening. Gabuyo, using East West
seeds technology, the usual fertilizer and Puyat’s input,
is earning P100,000 per season from his 600-sq-m lot near
his rice field.
They will
be taught freshwater-fish culture.
San Jose
City
is near Muñoz. They will be introduced to the Philippine
Carabao Center and the Small Ruminant Department of the
Central Luzon State University.
The main
focus is rice, but it will not harm to make of each
farmer-trainee a compleat farmer.
The Primer
Farm School plans to organize a “300 Club” for those
harvesting 300 cavans/hectare and above; and a “200 Club”
for those harvesting 200 cavans/hectare but below 300.
In the
municipality of Santo Domingo, which is near San Jose
City, one prized farmer this April harvested 260 cavans/hectare,
from 246 last year. Another harvested 237, from 215 last
year. If there was a link and they had adopted the RPP,
they would be prime candidates for the 300 Club.
The Primer
Farm School has invited a number of first-termers in the
House of Representatives, especially those with
constituents with irrigated rice fields to help end the
anxieties about the rice crisis by sending one or two
farmer-trainees to the PFS on June 15.
It’s a
small step for a big dream, but knowing that the
alternative—widespread hunger and unrest—is beyond
contemplation might be just enough to push the effort to
reality.
*Mr.
Osorio has been a development advocate-cum-social
scientist for nearly four decades, tirelessly advocating
the mix of policy, technology and people empowerment to
help communities hurdle natural and man-made barriers and
attain prosperity, in all the communities that his
peripatetic mission has taken him—from Central Luzon
farmers fighting drought, to upland former kaingeros, to
seaweed gatherers among the Badjaos opening their bank
accounts for the first time. For feedback, he may be
e-mailed at
wawell2004@yahoo.com. |
