MANILA, Philippines -- Make sure to get a copy of the June issue of Agriculture Magazine so you won’t miss the many informative articles that range from brown egg production to technologies that will increase the yield of upland rice.

You will read about the creative way that Danny C. Sim, an agricultural supply store operator, has been helping farmers as well as his distributors make a profit. Danny’s DCS store in Rosales, Pangasinan, is a big one and he has many sub-distributors of feeds, hybrid corn seeds, veterinary products, crop protection chemicals and many others.

For the sub-distributors to increase their sales of feeds, they usually advance the same to backyard raisers payable after they shall have sold their pigs. The trouble is that hog traders offer very low price for the pigs of back-yard raisers so that they have a hard time paying for the feeds advanced to them. So that’s also a problem for the sub-distributors. What Danny did was to buy all the hogs raised by those financed by his sub-distributors at a price much better than the traders.

Danny has put up a holding pen in Rosales where the butchers from the public markets and other buyers go to buy their requirements. He says he averages to sell 15 head every day. The backyard raisers are happy and so are the sub-distributor-financiers.

Danny also has done the same for the hybrid corn farmers financed by his sub-distributors. He buys all the financed hybrid corn and then supplies the grains to the two big feedmills that supply him with swine and poultry feeds. The corn farmers are assured of a fair price so they can pay back the seeds and other inputs advanced to them by Danny’s sub-distributors.

Dr. Pablito Pamplona, the retired professor from the University of Southern Mindanao, writes how easy and profitable it is to plant oil palm. Besides growing his favorite exotic fruit trees, Dr. Pamplona is now into commercial planting of oil palm.

You will also read the inspiring story of a very hard working fellow, Eddie Doromal, 52, of Banga, South Cotabato. As early as when he was in the elementary grades, he would wake up at four o’clock in the morning on Thursdays, the town’s market day. With his pushcart, he would assist merchants to bring their merchandise to their stalls for which he was paid 50 centavos. When he was 12 years old, his grandmother gave him a female piglet which he multiplied. After two years, he was able to sell seven fattened hogs for an amount that was enough to buy a brand new tricycle which he used for ferrying passengers from his barrio to the poblacion.

When he was 18, a landowner mortgaged to him a one-hectare farm for P3,000. He planted this to hybrid corn and observed that it was profitable to plant this crop. More farms were mortgaged to him and then he also bought several hectares of his own. Today, he is one of the biggest corn farmers in Banga. He owns over a hundred hectares now and also finances some 60 farmers who are cultivating a hundred hectares. He is now a millionaire many times over.

Hybrid vegetables really have a high impact on the profitability of farmers. This is shown by a recent research conducted in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. The research reported that 79 Indonesian farmers who planted the Permata hybrid tomato made a gross profit of US$3,607 per hectare, equivalent to P155,101 in Philippine money. On the other hand, the six farmers who planted the traditional variety made a gross profit of only US$1,673 or P72,440 per hectare.

The same was true with the Indonesian farmers who planted hybrid chili.