Farmlands for Rent

A local government gives its share in promoting entrepreneurship in Cavite

By Anne dela Cruz

Back in 2002, Rene Tongson, a councilor of Amadeo, Cavite, received a phone call from a rather excited Amadeo Mayor Albert Ambagan, Jr. The then 24-year-old mayor had an idea that would not only generate livelihood and income for his constituents but profit for those who would invest in his idea.

Ambagan’s main objective was to save the town’s ailing coffee industry. The problem, however, was not only limited to Amadeo. The country’s coffee yield had experienced a serious slump over the years. Thus, local coffee production now even falls short of local coffee demand.

Because of this shortfall, the country has been forced to import coffee from neighbors like Indonesia, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam. This has cost the country almost P1.2 billion.

“There is a sort of godfather system in sports which the mayor wanted to utilize especially with the idle farmlands in Amadeo,” Tongson related. “He was asking what the right term would be to adopt for his project, and I told him he just got the word—adopt.”

When they met after that phone call, Tongson was instructed to come up with the framework of the program at the soonest possible time. Thus was born the “Adopt-a-Farm Program” of the local government of Amadeo, Cavite. It was conceptualized under the auspices of the Presidential Task Force on Coffee Rehabilitation, now known as the National Coffee Development Board.

When the project was first conceptualized, the main objective was to encourage the private sector to participate in the revitalization of the Amadeo coffee industry. Under the scheme, the investor - or adoptee as they are called - will be paying the landowner P1 per square meter of farmland or P10,000 per hectare in rent per year, for a period of five years.
About 1,500 hectares of Amadeo’s 4,000 hectares of coffee plantation will benefit from the program. In the long run, the local government hopes to increase productivity of these coffee farmlands to 8,000 metric tons of coffee or approximately P3.5 million worth of green beans in a year.

“What makes this program stand out is the fact that you will be assisted by the local government of Amadeo,” said Tongson. “We will provide you with farm technicians who will help you manage the land you will be adopting and we will really make sure that your investment will not fail.”

To take part in the Adopt-a-Farm Program, one will have to personally visit Amadeo’s municipal agriculturist and undergo an orientation and technical briefing about coffee farming. After that, he will visit the farm of his choice and will enter into a memorandum of agreement with the landowner in the presence of local government officials.

“The landowners will benefit from the program because their idle lands will be cultivated and fertilized and real estate taxes will be taken care of,” he said. “Besides, more job opportunities will be generated for our constituents and this means that they won’t have to go out of Amadeo to look for jobs.”

In addition to the P1 per square meter rent for the piece of land (or a total of P10,000 per hectare), expect to spend between P80,000 to P160,000 more before the actual farming takes place. The amount will depend on the state of the farm and will also cover the salaries of the farm hands.

Since it takes about three years to harvest coffee trees, Tongson said Ambagan decided to introduce intercropping. This would enable adoptees to earn additional income while waiting for the harvest of the coffee trees. They have tapped the East-West Seed Company to help them in the intercropping program.

“We found out that the vegetables that are suitable for intercropping with coffee are ampalaya, squash, watermelon, tomato, eggplant, sweet pepper, and hot pepper, and it takes only three and a half months to harvest,” he said. “For that, you would have to set aside an additional P15,000.”

Since the local government has been able to come up with buyers for their agricultural products including coffee, adoptees can expect to make P60,000 to P80,000 per hectare per year.

Tongson reminded though that the farm can only be adopted for five years, and that it would be up to the landowner and the adoptee to decide whether they would want to go beyond the contracted period.

“The main purpose of this program is to rejuvenate our coffee farms and the adoptees are just there to jumpstart this,” he said. “We do not want our farmers to become complacent because, eventually, we would like them to take over their own farms and do the farming themselves.”

Noteworthy, Amadeo also came up in 2002 with the “Pahimis” coffee festival which seeks to promote agri-tourism in the town with coffee as the main showcase.

“This is an annual celebration of thanksgiving held on the second week of February every year,” Tongson said. “Amadeo will also be promoted as a tourist destination with the colorful and rhythmic street dancing in coffee costumes, trades and expositions and farm tours.”

He added that Ambagan had already made sure that the Adopt-a-Farm program would continue even if he is no longer mayor of Amadeo.
“Once the program has stabilized, we will be turning it over to the Amadeo Tourism Council,” Tongson said.