The fertile land of the Municipality of Tudela, Misamis Occidental is home to the Subanen tribe who rely on farming for their livelihood.

It is in this municipality that the Department of Agriculture Philippine Rural Development Project (DA-PRDP) implemented both enterprise and infrastructure subprojects to support a thriving cooperative of abaca farmers.

The “Rehabilitation/Concreting of Maikay-Cahayag-Buenavista Farm to Market Road” subproject runs through three barangays which includes Barangay Buenavista which is also the location of the Buenacama Agrarian Reform Cooperative (BUCARCO), the lead proponent group of the “Abaca Fiber Processing & Marketing” subproject.

According to Mary Jane Edo, an abaca farmer and board member of BUCARCO, many farmers like her have returned to planting abaca again as a result of the interventions given by PRDP. She believes that the support given by PRDP has convinced farmers in their community of the wider potential of abaca in the market.

“I currently have 150 hills of abaca and one of the reasons why I decided to go back into farming is the high demand and good price of abaca in the market,” said Edo. “Aside from that, we now have an accessible road for better transportation and processing facilities.”

Through this subproject BUCARCO is helping the farmers in their community to secure buyers for their abaca by buying the abaca from the farmer members on a per kilogram basis. They then haul and transport the raw materials to the processing center for classifying, processing, decorticating, drying, bailing, and delivery to the market in Iligan City.

This enterprise subproject is now 85.77% complete with the official turn-over of the hauling truck and decorticating machine to BUCARCO.

BUCARCO Chairman Midardo Acuram said that the machine provided by PRDP really changed their operation in terms of the time spent in abaca

“Before, we had to do the manual processing of our abaca so it took so much time and the quality of our fiber was not really that good. Also, we couldn’t produce a large volume because of limited manpower,” said Midardo. “With PRDP, we were provided with a decorticating machine to process our abaca and after processing, we can directly deliver it to our buyer in Iligan City because we now have our hauling truck. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and we are lucky to be one of the recipients.”

The hauling truck also reduced the cooperative’s transportation expenses because they no longer needed to pay for vehicle rental.

“Before we received this truck from DA-PRDP, we had to spend P10,000.00 for truck rental every time we delivered our abaca to Iligan City. Now, our transportation expenses were reduced to P4,000.00 only for the fuel, while P6,000 was added to our savings,” said Marilyn Acuram, bookkeeper of the cooperative.

BUCARCO is now planning to expand their operations to help more abaca farmers not just in their barangay, but throughout the Municipality of Tudela.
The road also had a great impact on the economic development of Barangay Buenavista.
Barangay Chairman Hipolito Acuram said that prior to this intervention from the government, they had been struggling in transporting their products especially on rainy days. The high cost of vehicle maintenance also meant higher transportation costs.
“We used to allocate one day for travel time going to town especially when the road was not passable and we just had to walk. If there were available vehicles, the fare was also expensive so it was really costly to deliver our farm produce,” said Hipolito. “It is different now. Most residents here own motorcycles where they can travel any time because the road is safe. Our community is also now accessible to other social services of the government.”

The Rehabilitation/Concreting of Maikay-Cahayag-Buenavista Farm to Market Road was already completed and officially turned over to the Municipality of Tudela last November 26, 2020.

Aside from Brgy Buenavista, the 13.4 kilometers FMR included the Brgy. Maikay and Cahayag as direct beneficiaries.
Tudela Municipal Mayor Samuel L. Parojinog said that there was a huge difference in terms of travel time based on his own personal experience.

“What used to be two hours travel time is now 20 minutes—that’s really a huge difference!” said Mayor Parojinog. “In terms of livelihood, farmers now have capital and equipment. Many barangays really benefited from PRDP and we are very thankful for all this overwhelming support.” (Joy M. Montecalvo, PSO Min)