Farmville for real

The best way to understand a problem is to become part of it.

The only way any problem solver can come up with actual and relevant answers is to become part of the problem. This is what I’ve been up to for the last two months or so during which I’ve actually immersed myself in problems and literally became part of it.

Two months ago I made a conscious decision to understand why coconuts in CALABAR zone were wilting and dying and what could be done about it. I researched, interviewed, interacted, invested and actually engaged in the physical, and the advocacy work to get people to participate instead of just argue. At a personal level I learned a ton of knowledge you won’t get from an MBA, got connected with people I would otherwise never meet, gained real insight and better understanding of government agencies, and I would like to think that I have stemmed the infestation in our small coconut patch.

I assumed that after that “fieldtrip” I would settle back to the concrete jungle, but God led me back instead to my patch of green, this time to deal with a hobby that has been losing money for several years. It started as nothing more than a quest to find a few honest to goodness baboy damo (wild pigs) that I wanted to preserve, believing they are quite endangered. Nuts! baboy damo are like cockroaches, they will probably survive a nuclear war like the ipis, and repopulate the earth or eat themselves to extinction.

I quickly had several breeding pairs. BIG MISTAKE. Baboy damo are prolific breeders, you could start with four and have 24 by year-end and they multiply like compounding interest. As I was thoroughly enjoying my pets I decided to find a “Duroc” pig, one of the toughest and popular commercial pig breeds. In my “kakulitan” I cornered Congressman Dong Mendoza who happens to be our district representative and the chairman of the House committee on agriculture. I don’t know if he wanted to make me one of his leaders or just being nice to his constituents, but he sent four of the cutest spotted piglets. In exchange I sent him the pick of the litter from my Great Danes.

 Three years later I’ve learned quite a lot about baboy damo and commercial pigs. Don’t let your baboy damo near anything green unless you want to deforest and denude your property or province. These animals love to chew the bark off trees! The 4 cute pigs on the other hand became behemoths and piglet factories but denuded my wallet! They don’t clean up after themselves although they use up enough water for a swimming pool.

After converting a lot of money to manure and below weight porcine, my friends from BMeg and Dr. Eugene Mende from San Miguel animal products suggested I seek professional help, which came in the person of Eric Brawner of Top Pigs. With excel on the screen, Eric presented our losses in undeniable figures. I could only justify the mess by calling it a hobby. My wife Karen would have none of it and Eric stuck the final dagger by pointing out that I was taking care of non-paying BOARDERS.

Since then, I have referred to our backyard farm as “Farmville” because everything that goes into it is on a spreadsheet as graphs, charts, and figures. We are 90% on the dot on whatever is inputted on the pigs. From the day the sow is impregnated to the day the piglets are officially 60 days old or to the day they can be slaughtered at about 5 months ideally 90 to 100 kilos. We know more or less how much of a profit would be there IF the farmgate price is positive. That unknown last 10% is actually what determines if farmers make a LITTLE money. Yes a LITTLE money. We spent 60 days on computations and learned things people ought to know regardless of whether you are a farmer or consumer.

If a farmer sells piglets his real profit per piglet is only P200 to P700 maybe. Many backyard farmers mistakenly compute cost and profit based on piglets alone, and fail or intentionally dismiss the cost of care for a pregnant sow, which is actually the bulk of the cost. The science of care and feeding and computations presented by established companies such as BMeg are actual and accurate, all things being normal. Whether it’s pigs, fish or chickens, you can hit the target. Where farmers screw up is not being precise and on schedule.

Hog raisers make more money on grow out or fatteners since they gain weight faster. But here is where the problem comes in. To raise and sell only 10 piglets a month, the cost of feeds would be below P30,000 on the average. But if you decide to go the full 5 months you jump up to P116,000 in feeds alone. Every mortality you have is a big loss. In addition your cost for clean up and maintenance increases drastically.

Now comes the bad part. There is no official body, or office that sets farmgate prices. There are anecdotal references but no official source that farmers and traders can do business on. Life would be more stable and perhaps profitable for many if there was an official INDEX like we have for foreign exchange/currencies. To encourage agriculture and promote job generation, Congress should enact laws that promote local sources of food coming from local producers giving incentives and preferential treatment to every barangay-based farm or producers. That law would help discourage barangay officials converting agricultural areas into “urbanized villages” and decimate our food sources and drive food prices up. Localized food sources would also insure freshness, reduce handling cost, as well as fuel and pollution.

A big help would be establishing and funding a legislated “livestock” market  for every town or city where prices can be set by the local government, so that consolidators and viajeros or lot buyers can’t chisel desperate individual farmers. This would also prevent people from going around farms and transporting germs and viruses. Government, especially legislators, should really talk to growers and producers because they do all the work but get the smallest cut from the profit. Hopefully Congressman Dong Mendoza and Senator Cynthia Villar can organize such town hall meetings along with secretary Kiko Pangilinan so we can all be part of the solution.