Farming can be very frustrating

By ZAC B. SARIAN

MANILA, Philippines -- Farming means hard work and while it is often gratifying, it can also be very frustrating.

It can be frustrating if it is not well planned. Just like what happened to a friend who has the money and the land but does not have much experience in planning a farming operation.

One day, he read about the wellness value of guyabano. So he went around and immediately bought 300 seedlings which he brought to his farm. He has two farmhands who were tasked to plant the seedlings. The problem was that the workers were inexperienced in planting fruit trees. They were used to taking care of tilapia and hito but not plants.

The workers took a long time to dig the holes for planting. Meantime, they didn’t bother to water the seedlings every day. As a result almost half of them withered and died.

Naturally the businessman farm owner who visited the farm only during weekends was really frustrated. He had paid good money for the seedlings which just withered away.

The lesson? He should have made sure that he had the right persons to take care of the planting. Perhaps, he could have bought just 20 or 30 seedlings that his men could have taken care of initially. Later, he could have bought more plants after seeing the result of his initial planting.

One other friend who combines business in the city and farming in his hometown in Central Luzon was really downhearted when his new farm worker just let the carabao on the farm devour his prized young Mama Sita banana. Then another frustrating experience was when another farm worker decided to resign without advising him beforehand and there was no other man to take over the chores of watering the fruit trees and vegetables that have to be watered every day. Naturally, many of the young trees and vegetables were really stressed. As stressed as the farm owner himself.

A lady we had known for a long time has a big family farm in western Pangasinan. We know she had been buying a lot of grafted mango seedlings and other exotic fruit trees.

When we met her lately, we asked her about her farm. She shook her head and said she should have known better. Many of the young mango and other trees that she planted perished because she had not fenced them. She said many of the young trees were eaten by the cows.

Anyway, she said she has learned her lesson. One should not plant more trees than what she and her workers could take good care of. Even if one would plant only a few trees if they are well taken care of, that would be much better than planting hundreds of them that are not given proper care, she said.

Another frustrated fruit farmer came to us recently. He said he had cut down his pummelo trees because of their poor eating quality. The seller had assured him that they were the Davao pummelo (he understood it to be Magallanes). It was only after four years that the variety he bought was of the inferior kind. He had lost four years in the process. It was a losing and definitely a frustrating experience. The lesson is that it is best to taste the fruit of the planting materials before buying, especially if it is for a big plantation.

One pilot had also complained to us one day. He has a farm in Lipa City and he was telling us that farming is not really enjoyable and fulfilling as we have portrayed in our articles about successful farmers.

His problem was that he had a very lazy farm worker. Instead of taking care of his fruit trees, fertilizing, watering and weeding them, his farm worker spends most of his time attending to his own fighting cocks.

Well, it is really frustrating if you don’t have reliable farm workers.

Another investor told us of his own frustration with his brother in law. This guy happens to be a contract grower of broilers in his hometown in Cagayan Valley. Since his wife who held a high position in a bank was transferred to another province, he the husband decided to relocate with her. Then he asked his brother in law to operate the contract growing operation.

The brother in law is experienced in raising broilers so our friend thought there would be no problem. But there was a big problem. The brod-in-law had his own agenda. He added a hundred chicks of his own to the birds in one house. This means that his 100 chickens had a free ride. They partook of the feeds intended for the birds of the integrator. Naturally, the legitimate chickens did not attain the right weight so the margin was very small.

The lesson, according to our friend, is that in agribusiness it is hard to trust even your relatives. You have to be a hands-on operator.