Mindanaotoday.com | The sibling revelry of nextgen farmers Reuel and Izzy Roque of Atugan Nature Farm
By: Vic Thor Palarca
MOST family farms are directly managed by its family members, and the Atugan Nature Farm of Impasugong, Bukidnon is no exemption.
Established in 2017, this six-hectare farm along Sayre Highway in Barangay Capitan Bayong in Impasugong, Bukidnon generates income to the Roque family and to their neighboring community.
Atugan Nature Farm is co-managed by siblings Reuel and Rezia Lyndee Maravilla Roque.
Reuel takes charge of the farm operation (he dabbles with value-adding from time to time) while Izzy takes care of product development and value-adding.
In a day of farm life between the siblings, Izzy is constantly figuring out how to grow and develop their farm and she makes sure that the business has a path to grow in the next few years.
Izzy plan things ahead, while Reuel executes their sensible plan. The top earning commodities in their farm are corn and coffee.
From planting corn, the family’s farm workers make their bestseller binaki or corn rolls. Their coffee beans are sold in nifty pouches either as dry beans or as perfectly roasted Robusta coffee beans.
Embracing the rural and farming life
Prior to their farming venture and foray in agriculture, Reuel and Izzy spent their formative years in the US with their parents Rory and Dawn, and later lived in Cebu City for eight years to pursue their dreams and aspirations.
As a film production major in the now defunct Big Foot Entertainment, Reuel preoccupied himself with show business and theater gigs, while Izzy initially planned to become a doctor since she is a registered medical technologist.
“I resigned from my day job as a disc jockey and left Viva Entertainment (much to their disappointment) where I was a local talent juggling appearances on TV, variety shows, and hosting gigs. What could have been an opportunity to transfer permanently in Manila and to explore more gigs and opportunities as a contract artist, I decided to resign and pursue farming because of its promising potential,” Reuel said.
The idea of growing one’s own food and becoming a steward of the environment greatly appealed to Reuel that he did all the research he can find to expand his farming knowledge from online materials available, reading agri-related books, and streaming how-to guides in YouTube.
It also helped that he got farming tips from his grandpa Roger and dad Rory.
“We really didn’t want anything to do with it at first. When we were growing up, we knew it was there but we had other dreams and best laid plans,” Izzy said as she recounted early memories in their farm.
“The turning point for us, and the biggest factor was our relationship with our parents. They didn’t force us while we were going on our own way. We realized that it actually made more sense to be here. We really wanted to be able to help them and the farming community,” she added.
There were several times that in the process of growing things, post-production, and in selling our farm produce that we thought we didn’t do it properly, like there’s loss of income, loss of profit but still at the end of the day, we were still able to learn to use it properly or how to be creative with it.
It helps to be on trial and error. I think as a farmer, it is essential to be patient and learn from it.
“Part of the reason young people don’t want to go into farming is that you have to go through that process of failing and most people would rather choose not to fail, but failure is essential since you cannot appreciate the value of success if you haven’t failed,” Izzy said further.
Responsible farming with the environment in mind
On its five years as an organic farm, Atugan Nature Farm remains sustainable and eco-friendly because of its commendable farming method and practices.
“The hardest thing about natural farming is finding ways where we don’t have to use chemicals and one of the challenges we face is breaking the stigma against farmers and breaking the misconceptions that the young people have with farmers.
I want to see people slowly pulling away from chemical fertilizers and all sorts of chemical applications. With the advent of JADAM organic farming, permaculture and natural farming. I also want to see ecosystems returning to their natural state, because you can still farm and protect the environment at the same time, you just have to learn to use different methods in planting and soil preparation and more natural methods of it.”
As to their experience in planting corn, Reuel can keep up with their binaki production since he propagates their corn in a four-month gap interval through staggered planting.
With staggered planting, he sows corn seeds every week or two over the course of four months.
Staggering planting dates is practically extending the pacing of the harvest.
“In the future, I want to see more farmers using natural methods instead of using chemicals. Using chemical is the easy way, but in the long term, it damages the soil and the environment. If you look at all the farms around us, most of them are using chemical sprays, so all of the wildlife that is supposed to be there congregates in our farm now. You can see Rufous-lored Kingfishers, Barn Owls, and Mindanao Kangaroo Shrews,” Reuel pointed out.
Agribusiness is a profitable business
The next-generation Roque farmers not only believe that there in money in farming, they also consider the welfare of the farming community by keeping them employed, imparting them with farming knowledge, and engaging through a buyback scheme.
As to their bestselling corn rolls or binaki, “we never had a full freezer. Every other day, there’s someone who will buy 10 kilos or 20 kilos in the farm. Oftentimes, when there is a batch of newly-steamed binaki available the next day, patrons or walk-in customers will dine-in or buy the whole batch.”
For the foodies out there who have not yet tried this corn-based delicacy, Atugan Nature Farm’s binaki is also known as “bina-cake” for its vibrant corn yellow color, fluffy texture and delicately sweet taste.
It is best served with a cup of hot coffee while enjoying the outdoors against the cold Bukidnon breeze.
As of writing, Reuel plans to organize a coffee picking activity and share through a farm demo the bean-to-mug experience to its farm visitors.
Enticing the young people to engage in farming
Sure enough, Reuel’s “star power” and exposure in show business and the entertainment industry came in handy, and was his way to leverage agriculture and farming to his former colleagues and farmer- enthusiasts from all walks of life.
“I try to change the mindset of the young people and teenagers from the cities and let them know that farmers are not what the media portrays them to be like. When you watch teleseryes or watch Tagalog tv shows, the farmers are always wearing that long sleeve buttoned down worn shirt with the wide hat and slippers. A lot of the farmers nowadays are not like that. The farmers that I know are doctors or soldiers or medical students who decided to go on full time farming,” he said.
The pressing issue of aging farmers and government interventions have also crossed their minds. In fact, Reuel and Izzy are confident that today’s young people have lots of ideas that can help and benefit the agriculture sector, and that today’s millennials can innovate and are very much in touch with the internet when they are presented with big database and information to pull from.
“To the young farmers of today, I think they also have to have grit, so that they will not get easily discourage. If you don’t have grit, you will get easily discouraged and give up. Grit and guts. I have lost whole beds of crops just through trial and error. For some, it’s enough to make them stop. Often times if you stop, you are just about to reach a new level,” Izzy added.
“Farmers should be adaptive with the times. Remember what Bruce Lee once said? Be water, my friend. I think farmers today should be like water, learn to bend, and learn to adapt to what’s new. We have to learn to be open-minded. A close minded farmer will only stick to a certain method of farming, even though that method of farming is already obsolete. Farmers should modify or innovate the best farming methods that work for him.
“Also, we hope that the government will continue to promote natural methods of farming. We have LGU visitors one time, they were amazed that we use leaf mold soil and not resort to the traditional ways of farming. We layer the soil or plots with leaves and left for a month or two to let microorganisms grow. The decomposed material is an excellent soil conditioner. We had a hard time explaining, especially to the older people practicing traditional farming that it is possible to farm the natural way.
“The most satisfying thing about farming is being able to see something through to the end, like seeing a crop reach its maturity stage. Seeing a single corn stock grow from little seedling to a full grown stock and to harvesting it. I love watching things grow. I love being given the chance to provide jobs here that’s why we did farm tourism and we are doing a lot of different and new projects, because we want to provide more jobs and we want to provide more livelihood, which is also one of our focuses in our Hinabol Project. Actually, we don’t earn much from it, just enough to cover marketing and shipping cost for orders outside the region. As long we can help continue the weaving tradition of the Higaonon Tribe,” Reuel concluded.
For more of Atugan Nature Farm, visit their official Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/
(As a civil servant, Vic Thor Palarca works for the Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Training Institute (DA-ATI) in Northern Mindanao as their Media Production Specialist. A content creator for print and online, he regularly contributes farmer’s success story and food-related articles in this publication.)
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