Egg production provides the crack for better income

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Egg production provides the crack for better income

VERUELA, Agusan del Sur ·

posted 21-Aug-2012 ·

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Rice farmers in Barangay Sampaguita of this municipality recently turned into egg production for them to have a regular income.

“Rice farmers here only know two words: short or failure,” said Samuel Viñan, member of the Sampaguita Irrigators’ Association (SIA) referring to their usual yield in rice farming.

Viñan who owns a hectare and a caretaker of another five-hectare rice farms said rice farming is not enough to meet the daily needs of his family.

“We usually just have break-even and sometimes have very low yield due to pests and diseases incidence which could not even supply for our food consumption” he said.

The same situation holds true with other irrigators associations in the town. So they decided to look for alternative income to address low productivity in rice farming.

Their plan to have alternative livelihood was realized when the municipal agriculture office endorsed their proposal to the Mindanao Rural Development Program (MRDP).

MRDP is a special project under the DA and jointly funded by the World Bank, the national and local government units.

The program provides livelihood assistance to small farmers, rural women, and indigenous tribe through its Community Fund for Agricultural Development (CFAD).

Although several suggestions cropped up on what livelihood should be implemented, the egg-laying production prevailed considering that there is a high demand for fresh eggs in the local market.

“Local egg traders used to sourced out their stocks outside Veruela without assurance of its quality and safety. With this, the organization thought of supplying the local market not only to earn more but also to assure consumers of fresh and better quality of egg products,” said agriculture technician Paterno Dayaday.

With the help of the DA office in Region 13, the association availed themselves of P250, 000 funds from MRDP-CFAD to start up egg production project. The amount was used to purchase layer stocks, feeds, and biologics including construction of poultry cages.

Since the success of egg-production business depends on effective management of layer farm, the municipal agriculture office conducted a hands-on training to better equip the association in handling their livelihood.

“We brought the SIA member to a poultry farm in the adjacent town of Sta. Josefa where they were exposed to poultry management from feeding, disease prevention and control, harvesting and storing including record keeping and marketing,” he added.

Viñan learned that his role as the caretaker of the poultry farm is crucial in ensuring healthy and productive stocks. He also learned that right from the start, layer stocks must be of good quality.

“We feed our layers three times a day and provide them vitamins and necessary antibiotics through the assistance of the municipal and provincial agriculture technicians,” he said.

Layers must be kept healthy to be prolific and provide best quality eggs. Viñan said he is restricting the number of persons entering the layer farm to avoid disease contamination.

“My son acts as my reliever in case I have fever or colds so we can keep our layers healthy,” he said.

Their efforts eventually paid off as their layer farm now yields at least 263 – 270 eggs per day.

“We are selling the large sized eggs at P140 per tray [or 30 pieces] and P130 for medium sized eggs,” he said.

As caretaker of the project Viñan gets 10 percent of their association’s income which gives him at least P3,000 – P4,000 monthly income which is a big help for him to meet his family’s needs.

“Before I can hardly pay the tuition fee of my children even if the school year is about to end. Now, they are fully paid as early as enrollment time,” he beams with pride.

He said other members are also reaping benefits from the projects such as meeting their daily consumption while some has even improved their houses and bought appliances like television set as well as motorcycle.

“We are glad that through the assistance of MRDP, DA regional office, and the provincial and local governments we were given the chance to improve their income,” he said.

Francisco Joseph, one of the board of trustees of the town’s council of irrigators’ association said they are planning to make use of the poultry waste through vermicomposting so that they can also produce organic fertilizer for their rice farms.

“We are also exploring ways to formulate organic feeds to minimize operating expenses. Once the association can pay back the amount they have accessed from MRDP-CFAD we will extend the same financial assistance to other irrigators’ association in the town,” he said.

MRDP program director Lealyn Ramos said the initiative of SIA has proven that farmers can have good economic returns if they would try to diversify farm production.

“Farmers should not be dependent on one commodity to overcome low productivity. The case of rice farmers in Veruela had proven that they can also handle egg-production and scale-up their meager income,” she said. (Noel T. Provido, DA-MRDP/RER/NCLM/PIA-Caraga)

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