MANILA, Philippines -- Farming can be a good source of income even as just a sideline for those who are employed. In fact there are many people we know who are making good income from farming as a sideline.

One of the latest we met is Jesus Andres, better known simply as JC (for Jesus Christ because he was born on December 25). JC is from Brgy. Malayantok in Sto. Domingo, Nueva Ecija, a major rice producing town.

JC who works as a full-time X-ray technician at the Science City Diagnostic Clinic in Munoz City, has been planting rice on two separate parcels of land in Sto. Domingo. One variety that he planted for the first time during the last season on 8,000 square meters was the Jollirice distributed by Bioseed Research Philippines.

When we met him at his farm they were busy harvesting and threshing their harvest. He reported that in a 1,000-square meter area that they harvested first, they were able to get 22 cavans of 58 to 60 kilos per cavan. That’s equivalent to 1,276 kilos. When translated into kilos per hectare, the yield would amount to 12.8 tons. That’s about 220 cavans per hectare.

At the time of our visit, the buying price per newly threshed palay in Sto. Domingo was P14.20 per kilo. The 1,276 kilos that was harvested from 1,000 square meters was therefore worth P18,119. And how much money did JC spend for producing his Jollirice crop that includes the cost of seeds, land preparation, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, harvesting and threshing, and other incidentals? For the whole 8,000 square meters, JC said he spent a total fo P34,000. The expense on the 1,000 square meters that he harvested first was only P4,250. Subtract that from the gross of P18,119 and you get a profit of P13,869.

Of course, the profit does not all go to the pocket of JC. One half of that will be the share of Benny Camus, his very reliable farm caretaker. Benny takes care of the chores like overseeing the land preparation, preparing the seedlings, planting, weeding, fertilization, spraying against pests and diseases and other chores on the farm. Benny is a high school graduate who has attended a lot of seminars on rice production.

Of course, the management of the farm is not left totally to Benny. JC also goes to the farm very often to check on the developments.

By the way, Jollirice is not recommended for planting in areas that are most of the time submerged in deep water. Estrella Hidalgo, product evaluation and agronomy manager of Bioseed, said that if the field is submerged with flood water most of the time, the plants will not develop a good root system and they will produce very few tillers.

Hidalgo recommends intermittent shallow irrigation and draining of the field. She said this will promote development of a lot of tillers that will produce grains. She adds that Jollirice is more resistant to drought than many other varieties. The panicles of Jollirice, she says, are also longer than those of most varieties. Each panicle may have 300 to 400 grains.

Another advice from Mrs. Hidalgo is that the panicles should be allowed to fully mature up to 115 days from planting before harvesting. The grains near the neck of the panicle should be allowed to fully ripen before harvesting. Otherwise, there will be a lot of broken grains when the palay is milled. The good thing about Jollirice, she adds, is that the grains don’t easily shatter. So there is no danger of the grains falling off the panicle even if the panicles are not harvested on time.

Another advice of Mrs. Hidalgo is that farmers should not apply a lot of urea once the rice plants have attained the booting stage. The nitrogenous fertilizer will just encourage the development of late tillers which will produce grains that will not be fully ripe when most of the panicles are ready for harvest.

One more trait of Jollirice that Mrs. Hidalgo is vey proud of is that the milled rice has excellent eating quality. It is aromatic, especially when newly milled, so that it can be sold as a fancy rice in the market which will command a high price.

By the way, JC and his wife Mary Rose have two young kids. They are JC’s two good reasons for him to engage in rice farming so that they can provide them with a good future. Mary Rose is a nurse who works as a CT Scan technician at the San Jose Heart of Jesus Hospital.