Science City Of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija — Ernesto Romero goes around town driving a Mercedez Benz. Aside from his luxury vehicle, he owns a six-hectare residential lot and a warehouse. At times, he earns P200,000 a week.
Mang Ernesto is no city big shot or big-time investor, but an industrious farmer who, at the age of 76, looks after his investment well with his hands literally in the dirt.
At his age, he takes pride in his achievement of being a “rich” farmer. Many Filipino farmers fall way down in the low-income earner bracket.
But Mang Ernesto became a millionaire with hard work, perseverance, industry and, yes, a little help from PhilRice to maximize the productivity of his farm land.
Who would have thought his four-hectare farm in Talavera, Nueva Ecija turned up a big profit through a variety of plants he had planted. All he planted are income generating like green pepper, calamansi, winged seguidillas beans (sigarilyas), papaya, banana, “malunggay,” and sampaguita flowers.
Mang Ernesto’s farm has become the goose that lays the golden egg. The income he derives from one hectare, planting the crops, is the same as the income he used to get from a four-hectare rice farm.
PhilRice Executive Director Eufemio Rasco said Romero’s experience is proof that farmers can become millionaires if they will optimize the use of their farms, diversifying rice variety and try other enterprises such as mushroom and duck-raising.
There are 365 days in a year, but a rice farmer only works about 110 to 220 days, giving him 145 idle days. The remaining days can be used to grow other crops like fruits and vegetables.
PhilRice has been spreading the gospel of sustainable, ecologically efficient and socially acceptable production system through Intensified Rice-Based Agri-Bio System (IRBAS) – which is capable of giving farmers a gross income of at least 1 million per hectare per year.
IRBAS is the system whereby all components of the rice plant can be used to produce other products.
“If the farmer uses rice by-products such as rice hull and rice straw for producing mushrooms, fertilizer, feeds, and energy, among others, then a million income is attainable,” Rasco said.
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