Banking on organic

MANILA, Philippines - If Gloria Parinas-Duterte were alive today, she would be cooking from her son’s organic farm produce of greens and herbs. And she would be so proud watching Ron sweating it out under the warm Cebu sun, rolling up his sleeves to work with his staff and proudly picking a leaf or two of organic lettuce or arugula.

Formerly a banker in Seattle, Ron Duterte came home to Cebu to bury his father and to keep his widowed mother company. As the youngest of three children he knew he had to come home for good while his sisters decided to marry, stay abroad and also pursue their careers.

He remembers growing up in Cebu exposed to  his mother’s cooking and her love for writing cookbooks and being a food writer. He knew his mother always wanted her own farm, too.  So for two or so years he did his research and went to Manila every so often to observe weekend organic markets and hoped Cebu would follow suit.

Today he shows us his Ron’s Farm Direct, located in upland Babag Dos, Cebu, some 500-plus meters above sea level but conveniently just 25 minutes outside the crowded Cebu metropolis. His farm will soon supply ECHOstore in Cebu with organic leafy vegetables, herbs and other farm produce.

“I am still waiting for my business papers to be completed,” he declares. “But I have started sending samples to my favorite restaurants and cafes.”

We walked through his plots of arugula and lollo rossa, snipping a leaf here and there and chomping our way through his farm. To cap the “salad sampling” he brews a pot of tarragon, mint and malunggay tea sweetened naturally with stevia, a natural sweetener also grown in his farm. “Take a leaf, “ he tells Johann Young, our guide and vegetarian convert-to-be. Johann tries the leaf of stevia and also tries the “tisane” or tea that Ron has proudly brewed for us.

One would be inspired to take up farming when you see what Ron has started. He has a vermicompost area where African night crawlers make the compost that will feed the plants. He has a seedling hut where there are sprouts like radish (reminds me of a Japanese salad called kaiware) and a mix of sprouts he calls his “zesty” blend. And he has scores of plots of lush arugula, lettuce like romaine and lollo rossa, parsley, coriander and more. All these on just 5,000 square meters but slowly getting bigger. He has enough land, after all.

A farmer at 42? Yes, we need more young men like Ron who decided to hang up his corporate suit for T-shirts and knickers and instead of a flashy SUV drives a cute orange pick-up with some rosemary sprigs in the back, ready for planting.

“I love coming to the farm,” he says. And you can feel his passion as he instructs his workers on which plant to put where and what harvest he is picking up for delivery. Really a hands-on guy whose “fire in the belly” is actually infectious.

Having worked in Seattle, he was exposed to the Pike Place Market where the freshest of seafood and fresh produce are legend. He remembers a place that sold homemade cheese, made their own bread and everything was sourced direct from the farm. And that’s what he keeps in mind as he plants yet another seed in Ron’s Farm Direct.

He wants to spread the practice of getting produce straight from the source.

Restaurants and cafes are hard-pressed to find the freshest of vegetables in Cebu. Ron observed this during his research of two years or more. He also noticed the dearth of organic sources for fruits like Cebu’s famous mangoes. So, he is off to start developing his mango trees in the farm to be productive and stay organic. And maybe other fruits as well. Maybe he will soon plant fruits trees in another property.

Why the focus on “farm direct” we ask him?  His mission is to be the first, if not the only, “farm direct” producer of organic fruits and vegetables in Metro Cebu. “This way, my friends who own restaurants can spread the word to their consumers about buying fresh and healthy,” he says. “I will be their purveyor.”

To prove his drive to achieve this mission, he has priced his vegetables at par with traditional ones in the market. “I need to price it the same as traditionally-grown vegetables so my future customers will give it a try,” he says. Well, we can only believe that this strategy will work to convert most if not all of Cebu’s restaurant owners to shift to organic. He is a banker, after all, and bankers know their numbers.

But even more than the money side of the business, Ron also wants to share his healthy lifestyle with his friends and family. His strategy may be right and we should believe that he is actually “banking on organic.”

If all bankers were like Ron, what a healthy world we will surely live in.

Ron’s Farm Direct organic vegetables is now available at Cebu’s ECHOstore at Streetscape.