WRAPPING HARVESTED PAPAYA — Carmelo Ramos (second from left) is the acknowledged Papaya King of San Pablo City with three different papaya plantations in San Pablo City in Laguna. His biggest plantation is in Brgy. Soledad where he grows 12,000 papaya trees consisting of three varieties, namely Sinta, Red Lady and Red Royale from East-West Seed Company. From the Soledad plantation, he harvests an average of 8 tons a week, most of it bought by a big trader in Metro Manila. Here he is overseeing his workers who are wrapping the fruits with newspaper prior to putting them inside plastic crates in his warehouse for for pick up by his buyers.
A former seaman who worked as an oiler in a rescue ship that went around the world rescuing vessels in trouble is now the acknowledged Papaya King of San Pablo City.
He is 54-year-old Carmelo ‘Milo’ Ramos of Brgy. Soledad, San Pablo City in Laguna. Right now, he has three papaya plantations in three different places in this provincial city where he has planted a total of 18,000 papaya trees of different ages.
His currently most productive plantation is in Brgy. Soledad where he has a total of 12,000 trees consisting of three varieties. These include 5,500 Sinta, the hybrid produced by the Institute of Plant Breeding in Los Baños, Red Lady developed in Taiwan, and Red Royale developed by plant breeders of East-West Seed Company. The planting materials are all distributed by East-West.
From the Soledad plantation, he harvests about 8 tons a week, most of which is bought by a big trader from Metro Manila who pays an average of P15 per kilo. The seconds (rejected by the big buyer) are sold to stallholders at Nepa Q-Mart in Quezon City and roadside stalls in Laguna.
Ka Milo was a seaman for nine years, enjoying his job because he was able to go around the world. While working at sea, however, what an old lady fortune teller had told him when he was a young boy was always on his mind. The fortune teller, he said, had told him that his good luck will be found on land and not at sea.
Thus, after 9 years as a crew member of the rescue ship, he decided to give up his maritime job and become a farmer in his home barangay. That was in 1999. First, he and a relative planted rambutan trees on land owned by his family. While waiting for the rambutan trees to grow and bear fruit, they decided to plant Sinta papaya which had become popular at that time.
RED ROYALE — This is a dwarfish variety of papaya developed by East-West Seed Company that is one of the varieties being grown by Carmelo Ramos in San Pablo City. The first fruits are just a few inches above the surface of the soil. It is highly prolific, yielding oblong fruits. Carmelo buys ready-to-plant seedlings from East-West instead of germinating the seeds himself. He finds it more practical that way.
That first papaya venture was an instant success. They harvested no less than 50 tons from the 1,000 Sinta papaya trees they grew. Although the selling price then was only P7 to P8 per kilo, it was very profitable. He estimates that they did not spend more than P100,000 to produce the 50 tons worth P350,000 to P400,000 in a matter of two years.
Since then, Ka Milo has always been planting papaya. After new varieties like Red Lady and Red Royale have appeared on the market, he did not hesitate to try them in his plantations.
Aside from making money for himself, Ka Milo is providing a lucrative source of income for young men who work for him as pickers of the ripening fruits. As soon as the fruits show signs of color break (a portion of the skin becomes yellow), the fruits are harvested. This is to prevent the fruits from being damaged by fruitfly.
As many as 15 workers are hired to harvest the fruits each time. After doing the harvesting, they wrap each fruit with old newspaper, load them in a trailer for delivery to Milo’s warehouse where the buyers pick up their requirements. Milo said that the workers are P250 per half day of work.
Milo shows that one need not own every land that he cultivates. There are many farms that are for rent. Milo, for instance, rents the 6-hectare Soledad plantation for only P5,000 per year per hectare. He said that the owner is a friend who owns a lot of farm lands. Being a good friend, he can get that for practically a song. The term is good for at least two years.
What is good about using rented land for papaya production is that one can relocate his plantation every so often. The advantage is that there is less possibility of disease prevalence when every now and then a new site is used for growing papaya. There is no build up of viruses and other disease organisms, for instance.
INSPECTING HIS SINTA PAPAYA — Photo shows Carmelo Ramos, the Papaya King of San Pablo, posing with his fruitful Sinta papaya, one of the three varieties he is growing in his Brgy. Soledad plantation. Sinta is a hybrid produced by the Institute of Plant Breeding at UP Los Baños. It is a prolific hybrid that remains a current favorite of growers in Luzon. It has yellow flesh that is sweet. It is claimed to be tolerant to papaya ring spot virus.
Ka Milo is happy with papaya because the gestation period is quite short. For instance, the papaya trees from which he is harvesting a bumper crop in Brgy. Soledad were planted in December 2012 through the following January. By the following September, he already started harvesting from them. And he expects to make a good harvest for at least 15 months from the first harvest.
Right now, he is already readying a new plantation that will take over the production from his Soledad plantation. This early, he has placed an order of a few thousand ready-to-plant seedlings from East-West Seed. Because he orders by the volume, he is also given a good discount.
Mrs. Ramos, the former Maria Victoria Gonzales, is handling the finances of the farm. She takes care of the income as well as the payroll for the workers.
Besides his papaya project, Milo is also involved in buying fruits of rambutan and lanzones in partnership with his brother-in-law. He said his brother-in-law, Ruben Gonzales, is a very hard working guy who takes care most of the chores of contracting the buying of fruits from other plantation owners.
Even before the flowers of the fruit trees come out, they might have already contracted to buy the harvest. Most of the time, they make money but there are also times when they only break even or even lose money. But that is the reality in the business, according to Milo.
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