From manual farming, farmers in Paniqui, Tarlac now benefit from tractor services through the Department of Agriculture’s Philippine Rural Development Project (DA-PRDP).

A custom service facility project amounting to P959,000 now benefits 1,206 members of the GP-125 Golden Pance Multi-Purpose Cooperative – the main proponent of the project.

Aside from helping farmers to recover the losses in farming due to typhoons, the project aims to provide land preparation and irrigation services with discounted price, and increase the income of farmers in terms of saving on rental.

Through comprehensive surveys and interviews from the Rapid Appraisal of Emerging Benefits (RAEB), data revealed that with the intervention of PRDP, average household income of the beneficiaries increased by 20.04%.

This comparison covers a cropping period without PRDP (October 2016 to November 2017) wherein farmers recorded an average household income of P284,990.06 while with PRDP, (December 2017 to October 2018) it has gone up to P342,112.89.

In addition, a 30% increase was seen in the farmers’ net income from farming – from P74,794.50 to P90,694.80, while production cost went down by 17.53%.

In terms of land preparation, cost went down from P5,756.19 to P5,217.54, incurring a savings of P538.6 per hectare.

Tractor Operator Joseph Ryan Ramil shared that the old method of using kuliglig took him one to two days of land preparation. With the tractor, an hour and a half is enough to plow one hectare of land.

“I used to receive a minimum of 300 pesos a day. But now, if I’m lucky enough I can plow six hectares a day, times P300 per hectare. It has really increased compared before,” said Ramil.

Ramil added that the cost of renting the tractor for cooperative members ranges from P1,500 to P1,600, while renting from private groups usually cost up to P2,000.

Stories from the field

GP-125 member Christopher Tolentino recalled how difficult it was to look for an available carabao to start with land preparation activities.

“If we fail to find one, we would go to the far barangays in the Nueva Ecija boundary to avail of tractor services. We would travel back and forth, just to look for an available tractor,” shared Tolentino.

It would take them at least two hours in looking for a tractor. Farmers would reach the province of Nueva Ecija, all the way to Anao.

He added, “We would spend on vehicle rents and gasoline consumption since we did not have our own vehicle at that time. We would also fill the rented tractor until it reaches full tank and once it reaches the farm, we would fill it up again.”

“But with the tractor from PRDP, we now save about 800 pesos at most. That amount can go a long way already.”

Francisco De Vera, Vice Chairman of the cooperative said that acquiring the tractor took a long but fulfilling process.

“We attended seminars on machineries and policies conducted by PRDP prior to the awarding. We worked hard in complying for the requirement before finally receiving this tractor,” he added.

The Province of Tarlac has a total of 40 completed enterprises under PRDP, earning the top spot as the province with the most enterprises nationwide. (Kayla Arceo, InfoACE North Luzon)