TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, July 31 (PIA)—“If we bring our camote (sweet potatoes) to Getafe, it sells at P25.00 a kilo. Sometimes, when there is over harvesting, we could only shake our heads and surrender to fate for the loss.”
Sadly, the chairperson of San Carlos (Danao) Association for the Rehabilitation of Environmental Denudation (SCARED) shared this, and similar woes of his member farmers who cultivate the patches of farms near the forests and the Wahig River water.
Camote do not sell as much and only these kinds of root crops and some tubers grow in these patches, that farmers are sometimes forced to get into the forests to gather more resources and harvest trees in unsustainable use of resources.
There have been times when the rivers overflow as erosion and indiscriminate kaingin and clearing of forest patches increase the threats of climate change in these areas, notes the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Bohol.
While sweet potatoes are great for multiple cropping and could harmoniously survive with the trees, selling them as raw could only make enough for farmers here.
That, however provides a perfect entry point for Integrated Natural Resource and Environmental Management Projects (INREMP) to get in, with its bag of community self-help menu.
Implemented by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), INREMP gets to SCARED, with its 293 member farmers, and started to is now among the DENR beneficiaries of its (INREMP).
INREMP is a 7 year project that aims to manage the watersheds to support poverty reduction, biodiversity conservation and climate change effects mitigation and focuses on empowering local governments and communities as partners for the goal of recovering the lost forest cover.
And for this, INREMP enrolled the pilot community members in Farmers’ Business Schools (FBS) to train them the basics of business skills which include marketing concepts, identifying and prioritizing market opportunities, product development and business planning through its nine modules comprised in the 31 sessions after two years of organizing.
With the partnership of Food Resilience through Root and Tuber Crops in upland and coastal communities of the Asia-Pacific (FOODSTART+), the government piloted SCARED and five other people’s organization of farmers cultivating lands in the fringes of forests and within the four watersheds, 17 towns and 151 barangays of the INREMP sites in the FBS.
In the pilot FBS are the 25-farmer members of Lundag Eskaya Tribe Multipurpose Cooperative (LETMULCO) under German Busano; 25-member San Miguel Association Resource Team (SMART) under Samuel Ayenza; 63 household members of Concepcion Livelihood and Environmental Association Project (CLEAP) under Paul Gumanoy.
The 74 member Ilaya Sustainable Farmers’ Association of Inabanga, Bohol Inc (ISFA)under Gilberto Socorin; the 293 member San Carlos Association for Rehabilitation of Environmental Denudation (SCARED) under Apolonio Avelino and the 71-households member of Nagkahiusang Mag-uuma sa San Vicente Association (NMSVA) with Nicomedes Lusica.
The FBS is an approach developed by International Potato Center (CIP) and involved 8 module course featuring participatory learning action process that had farmer POs joining farming value chains, explains Arma Bertuso of CIP-FOODSTART+ during a Business Launching held at the Island City Mall recently.
Now, the government trained our members how to add value to camote, including business planning and marketing, SCARED’s Avelino said.
From sweet potatoes, they now pack sweet potato chips at P30.00 per 100 grams, largely increasing camote’s market value ten times.
“Our products from the FBS now include sweet potato beverage, sweet potato jam and sweet potato ketchup,” he enumerated.
On the other side of town, Samuel Ayenza, SMART chairperson said “equipped with knowledge and skills learned from the FBS modules, we process our available root crops: sweet potatoes, taro, gabi and cassava into chips, muffins and cake.”
At the headwaters of Wahig, in Pilar town, NMSV chairperson Nicomedes Lusica shared a different product.
Aside from the root crops, residents looked at cacao-based enterprises, “because it has been customarily grown in the community as traditional source f food and income for farmers,” he shared during a post launch press conference held at Reynas Garden, in Tagbilaran City, July 28.
Tableya da San Vicente is made from the finest cacao beans grown in our barangay san Vicente, the mixture of Brazilian and native varieties are slowly hand-roasted to give you that perfect chocolate blend Bohol is famous of, he explained.
Here, in previously idle patches of abandoned kaingin farms, the community grown cacao trees while under them, they grow sweet potatoes, cassava, taro, ubi and palau, which again can be processed for increased market value and shelf life.
In Inabanga, a community within the Wahig watershed, ISFA chairperson Gilberto Socorin agreed: more than the project’s objectives, INREMP to us means the development of our areas, and a promise of a quality of life we never thought we could get in this lifetime.” (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
Camote farmers in the INREMP areas in Bohol now find that processing the root crop adds value to the lowly product. Here, farmers display the value added camote products after they complete the 9 module Farmers Business School, which taught them products development and marketing. (rahc/PIA/-7Bohol )
No comments:
Post a Comment