Buruanga’s Successful Vegetable Farmers
“It is my dream to own a land. A legacy I can give to my children.”
The Agrarian Reform Beneficiary (ARB) couple Arnold and Mildred Patricio’s pride is emblazoned on their hard earned concrete bungalow house in Brgy. Tag-osip, Buruanga. Their solid foundation and the continued improvement of their family is an unyielding proof of how they work to survive rural development. They are one of the few locals in Buruanga, Aklan who are recipients of the Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) from DAR. The couple, both at only 36 years old, have six (6) children ages 17, 16, 11, 8, and 7. The youngest is 5 years old.
Mildred is a teacher in Brgy. Tag-osip. She is the only teacher who teaches kindergarten and elementary in their barangay while her husband devotes most of his time tilling the land they own. She also assists develop properties of their families. They too are very grateful to DAR for giving them the opportunity to own a land.
Farming runs in the blood of the Patricios in Tag-osip. Most of them rely on the vast coconut plantation and depend upon copra, banana and upland crops. The two parcels of land they own through DAR, situated in Sitios Luho and Catimban, Tag-osip are quite far from their residence. It is mostly planted to coconut. Arnold harvests around five (5) sacks of copra every four months. They also earn an average of Php 400 from selling bananas every two weeks.
Lucky for Arnold for he also earns off-farm income from working at his family’s rice lands in Brgy. Nazareth and Tumansapa, Buruanga. He takes home 15 bags of palay every cropping cycle. With Arnold’s income from the land he tills and the meager salary Mildred earns from teaching, they sustain their family needs. But as the family members increase, and with two of their children going to tertiary schools, the couple finds it hard to meet both ends.
DAR-ARISP Intervention
Mildred is always enthusiastic vegetable grower. In their backyard farm, she plants and produces vegetables to augment their daily need for food. But never had she imagined of planting vegetables bigger than her backyard.
When DAR-ARISP III introduced the agricultural development component through an agri-enterprise project on high value crops production, Mildred was fortunate to attend training in a prominent seed breeding industry to study new technology on growing vegetables. Meanwhile, Arnold was one of the project beneficiaries in the ARC receiving inputs, training and technical support. Together, they started to develop a 500 sq.m demonstration farm planted to tomatoes and cucumber. Throughout the 1st cycle of production, they earn Php10,000. This encourages them to expand their farm. They converted the land into a vegetable hub. They are now cultivating a 5,000 square meters vegetable area devoted to bitter gourd, cucumber, string beans and eggplant. They earn not less than Php3,000.00 per month from their vegetable crops.
Now, Mildred’s second child will enroll in college. She foresees another source of investment. She is thankful to DAR not only for giving her family a chance to own their land, but for giving them a place they could really call a home. The basket of opportunities that came to their barrio now is a fruit of their long-awaited development. Though the road project is yet to be constructed, Mildred and her family thank all the conscious efforts in fostering development in their barangay. The vegetable project in Tag-osip not only proves that their land is suitable for high value crops, the projects also show they can do it.
With their cooperation, determination and resourcefulness they can transform their barangay into a vegetable source for Buruanga and for the province of Aklan. They hope CARP projects of DAR continue to uplift the lives of the farmers like them. Instill the essence of commitment and perseverance in the quest to strengthen their economic level and thus encourage countryside development. /MP
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