SAN FERNANDO CITY, La Union — The system of cooperatives is gradually transforming farmers into entrepreneurs.
No longer marginalized, rice growers in the Ilocos region are earning additional income by trying other income-generating ventures.
Having been organized into agrarian reform communities (ARCs), the farmers now run multi-purpose cooperatives that help open up channels for new entrepreneurial undertakings.
Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) regional director Renato Alano said most of the 140 ARCs, each having hundreds of farmer-members, have been organized into stable cooperatives engaged in diversified post-harvest ventures like palay-trading poultry and swine contract-growing and fruit-vegetable trading.
“With the average palay farm size of three to five hectares, Ilocos farmers have to be more pragmatic to expand their basic sources of income,” Alano said, as he noted that a farmer earns a yearly income of P120,000 from rice farming.
The coops, he pointed out, loan out to members P10,000 to P15,000 interest-free for farm inputs, payable upon the sale of their crop harvest.
Some of the bigger coops, according to Alano, were spearheaded by landed gentries who helped put up the seed capital.
He cited, for instance, the Nalasin Multi-Purpose Cooperative in Dingras, Ilocos Norte initiated by Vicente Go Teng, a Filipino-Chinese businessman who loves farming more than his other business interests.
During the early formation of the cooperative, Go Teng donated four hectares of his property to a group of farm workers in a remote village in Dingras town to encourage them to till the land the cooperative way.
Later, as the cooperative’s financial assets grew, Go Teng, touched by the strong bondship demonstrated by the farm workers, distributed 30 hectares more of his farmlots to other farm tillers and egged them to plant forest and fruit-bearing trees as a way of helping combat global warming.
The farm tillers now own the parceled out lands which are being paid on easy installment basis.
Meanwhile, the cooperative that the generous Filipino-Chinese initiated now has assets of over P5 million which is being rolled over to keep the various ventures the ARC profitable.