TWO BASIC RESOURCES

TWO BASIC RESOURCES

By: Arnulfo ‘Cocoy’ Yu Laniba
Agape Foundation (Agasoft)
Email: cocoy777@yahoo.com

We have two available basic resources: mind and land.

Mind must develop its talent into hobby (for pleasure & honing), then, employment (for experience & sharpening) then into self-employment (without employer) and then business (personal/family) and industry (taking the role of a teacher, sharing his talents through training and nurturing his same-talent juniors).

For food, the Land must be cultivated for grain fields. For capital (source of funds for talent development & later, business capital), portion of the Land must be developed into orchard in addition to grain fields.
If we can still maximize our abandoned fields and farms and turn them into orchards to produce P375,000.00 a year per 15 mango trees (that is, some P30,000.00 a month), then, why hesitate doing that? Why won’t our OFWs invest in this? Fifteen mango trees will not take much bigger than 1,000 square meters of land, I estimate, which most families in the country today owns! But the ideal space for 15 mangoes, according to agriculturists, is half a hectare in a 10 to 15 meters distance between trees. What family can remain poor if it earns P30,000.00 a month? P30,000.00 a month is a manager’s salary! More than the salary of most mayors! That’s my personal estimate. The Cebu agriculturists’ estimate is much more reliable and realistic because it is based on actual experience of the Cebu mango growers.

Basing on the experience of the Cebuanos, you can have a yearly income of P5,625.00 from 15 mango trees in the 6th to 7th year after planting. At the 15th year, you will have P17,000.00 a year. At 20th year, you will have P39,469.00 a year. At 30th, you will have P158,339.70 – a year. At 40th year, P253,090.95!

You will start being able to survive from your orchard at year 20 which will yield you some P3,289.00 a month. If you planted the mangoes in your 30th birthday, then, you will experience this P3,289.00 a month income when you will be 50 years old. That is bigger than most pensions!

If you supplement it with vegetables, rice or corn, cows and goats and chicken, then, you will surely survive in the rural.

I am now 39 years old and my more than 15 mangoes are on their 12th year. They will be 20 years old when I will be 47 years old! Our five children will be 19, 17, 15, 13, and 10 at that time.

If I will send them to college, one will be finished at that time. The second will be still in college. The other two will be in high school. The youngest will be in the elementary.

Our UP-lecturer told us he is in his late 50s and still suffer to support his children in college. A wiser plan is to LET OUR CHILDREN GET OR ACQUIRE AN EDUCATION OR SKILL AT LEAST EQUIVALENT TO COLLEGE OR EVEN MORE THAN IT BY TURNING THEM INTO ENTREPRENEURS OF THEIR OWN TALENTS AND SKILLS and so send them to formal school up to high school only.

Result: Enjoying ‘retirement from big education expenses’ is possible for us, their parents, at the same time, our children will have speeded up to become earners far ahead their contemporaries. Also, together, parents and children can work for their orchard and for their talents and businesses, as well as personal and spiritual growth!

So, early retirement is feasible. This ‘retirement’ means the withdrawal from city-based works especially if such work is not your talent, shift to agriculture and the pursuit of your talents and above spiritual development. “Retirement” does not mean inactivity; rather, it is heightened activity but one which is suited to what you love doing; it is work still but finally with joy and love!

This early retirement will mean a combination of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY (talent development, utilization and its entrepreneurization). If you opt to stay ‘incomeless’ aside from your mangoes’ income, and just concentrate on your hobbies, and spiritual studies for example, well, it will be up to you.

This whole integrated AGRO-INDUSTRIAL formula I am sharing to you is my own experience. Not to say that I have already at the tip of success, no I’m still on the way to success. But you need not dismiss this my humble suggestion (formula) merely because I have not reached the end, because I have not depended on my own exclusive experience – I AM MERELY FOLLOWING THE PATH THAT OTHERS, ALBEIT ONLY A FEW HAVE ALREADY TAKEN AND PROVEN!

The only risk or change that we will need to look at to is: WILL WE BE ABLE TO HAVE THE SAME HARVEST IF WE WILL NOT USE THEIR RECOMMENDED CHEMICALS, that is, if we will solely depend on organic methods? My answer: those who have used 100% organic system in rice (e.g., SRI system) have harvested two to three times greater (240 to 360 sacks a hectare) than what commercial fertilizers could achieve (only 120 sacks a hectare). Corn in Cebu has attained 5 to 10 ears per plant using mainly organic fertilizers, instead of the traditional 1 or 2 ears per plant.

You will experience the big break at the 30th year of your mangoes, when your mangoes will give you a whopping P158,339.70 – a year! For that is P 13,194.98 a month! When your mangoes reach jubilee (50th birthday), P 369,164.70 will be the annual income, or a monthly income of P30,763.73. That’s an executive’s salary! A rich man’s income already!

At 60th, the half a million peso mark is passed!

Yes, by only 15 mango trees!

These estimates constituted 70% of all fruits, where 30% are considered not for the market.

Take note that these 15 mango trees should be planted on a half an hectare lot. For the ideal number of mango trees in a hectare is 30. Take note also that the buying price is put initially at P0.75 per fruit on ‘corridas’ basis with a successive 10% yearly rise.[1]

Let us go back and finally realize, brothers, that GOD WANTS US TO DETERMINE WHICH IS MORE REALIABLE AS “FUTURE SECURITY”: the OFW-employment or creating our own diamond fields right in our own home and backyard? The SSS or the mango tree? The GSIS or the mango trees? The CAP or the mango trees? The Pacific Plans or the mango trees? The Platinum Plans or mango trees? His trees or man’s business? He or man? He or government? “Mango tree” can also mean any other profitable and above all, enduring fruit trees.

In the face of our economic crisis where giants [e.g., Levi’s, Worldcom, CAP, SSS, GSIS, ec.] fall one after another, may I ask: Whose system works better: God’s or man’s? Who is our security: God or ourselves?

We praised too much man’s system. We spurned God’s old ways of farming. We hated the land. We left it. We abandoned old parents! We were attracted by the glitters of materialism and the beckoning ‘lights’ of the city. Because we preferred SSS or GSIS or CAP or anything like them!I do not mean we totally abandon business or government, but we must come to realize that our rejection of farming, or our distaste of the land, due to the pride that comes from being a college or university graduate is wrong! Totally wrong! Didn’t Christ told us to “Come to Me…learn from Me… Humility and Gentleness”? But there we have gotten from schools – diploma and pride!And so we rejected land, old parents, old houses and God!
Above all, because of our rejection of God and His methods of living, we have fallen into the pit of our own making! And this crisis-pit is not going to disappear until we will have learned to acknowledge HIM. That I can guarantee us all!

Orchard or fruit farming has the potential of being able to finance a family member’s talent and career development, and business ventures, without resorting to the deadly loan sharks! Imagine how many businesses could have flourished today if these were financed by the free and interest-free income of the family orchards, instead of the loan sharks or banks that ironically drove to bankruptcy (thankfully!) what they ‘disguised’ to help.
The Philippines has a still untapped great potential of becoming the world’s producer-exporter of many different fruits that only the Philippines and a few tropical nations are very much blessed by God to grow. We can supply the rest of the world, over 150 nations to be our fruit market.

Possibilities are limitless – if we can work together! If we can realize the value of God’s gift — the land and the fruit trees!

That can solve our growing menace of prostitutions. Brethren, Let us sell fruits, not flesh! Only one is our hindrance: the sin called IMPATIENCE! Synonym: THE DESIRE TO GET-RICH-QUICK until God’s method of hard work, humility, patience and honesty is violated!
And because of that, to go back to the farm has become so difficult to do due to so much abuse of the soil and due to the tremendous time we have lost already. There is a way to catch up, but TEAMWORK BETWEEN GOVERNMENT, NGOs AND POs IS REQUIRED. Above all, not just cooperation but best of all, the initiative of the people, organized or not, is very much necessary.
If this teamwork is formed, then, I foresee that within 5 or not longer than 10 years, we can save this nation from its worsening economic woes.

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[1] Source brochure: Cebu Tecnoguide – Mango, by Central Visayas Technology Packaging Project, 1991