When he retired as PNP chief several years back, Gen. Recaredo Sarmiento was offered a high-paying job in a first class hotel in Manila. Despite the big offer, he opted to become a full-time farmer, instead.

Now he is a very happy man, with thousands of exotic fruit trees and forest trees already planted, and still counting. We met him at the Flora and Fauna expo last week and he was really excited showing us the pictures of his profusely flowering longkong trees. Longkong is the Thai lanzones variety which produces sweet fruits with few small seeds and with very minimal latex. It is a high-priced variety, fetching more than double the price of the local lanzones in the local markets.

Gen. Sarmiento operates in two places. He has a three-hectare farm-resort in Lucena City where he has planted 150 longkong trees, and lesser number of durian, rambutan, mangosteen and latexless jackfruit. Some of them have started to bear fruit.

In his hometown of Gasan, Marinduque, he has a much bigger operation. There he has planted 800 longkong trees, 300 rambutan, 200 mangosteen and durian.

Aside from attending to his own farm, he has been very busy conducting lectures on the planting of exotic fruit trees before farmers not only in his hometown but also in other towns of the province. Because of his hands-on knowledge in exotic fruit production, he has become the most knowledgeable consultant on the subject in the province.

In fact, he is the general supervisor and consultant of a P17-million project of the provincial government and the local government financed by the Development Bank of the Philippines.

This calls for the planting of some 22,000 lanzones trees and 300,000 mahogany trees in 30 interior barangays in Boac, Sta. Cruz and Torrijos. The project also includes rehabilitation of mangrove areas in coastal communities. They have already planted 40 percent of the lanzones since the project started in the middle of last year. In 10 years, Gen. Sarmiento said, Marinduque could be the biggest producer of lanzones in Luzon.