TABUK CITY, Kalinga – The success of Antonio and Susan Diaz as fruit producers is obvious: among the commercial fruit farms in Bantay, theirs which is along the highway in the center of the barangay is the most visited during the fruit-bearing season starting from July to November.
The Diaz orchard has an edge because apart from the usual array of fruits in Bantay which is dubbed the fruit basket of the city, it is the only place in Kalinga where durian, avio (cross of chisa and star apple) and sweet Abulug pomelo are available.
As to the income, the couple did not mention an updated amount but said that it is enough for their needs. “Their” refer to the couple and the four grandchildren who are in their care.
They also said that their income from their orchard financed the education of their children and likewise enabled them to purchase land.
According to them, they have no other source of income now as Antonio has terminated his passenger jeepney operation and they have also sold their rice farms due to the harder work they demand and the possibility of being cheated if entrusted to others.
The story of the couple’s quest for the best use of their four-hectare land which was fraught with hits and costly misses started at the end of 1985 when Susan resigned from her job as midwife of the Department of Health because of the observation that she could earn in one coffee harvest her salary in three years in the government.
However, the coffee boom was short-lived and there came a time when it was no longer practical to maintain the coffee plantation. Because at that time, prices of bananas were good, the couple decided to switch to bananas.
Antonio recalls that during the heydays of the banana industry in the then town, he would deliver a jeep load of bananas to Urdaneta, Pangasinan on a weekly basis but that the good fortune did not last long either because the plantations in the locality were soon irremediably devastated by pest.
The land fallowed until sometime later when hybrid corn was introduced in the town and quickly spread. Antonio went along with the trend and planted the available area of their farm with corn.
At that time, a hectare of the land was planted with mangoes.
Susan related that at the encouragement of then governor William Claver who said that with more mango production in the locality, a company will come to set up a mango juice factory, they planted mango trees.
But they said that they were only able to harvest once and at the low price of P5.00 per kilo because of a couple of factors: in order to flower, the mango trees needed to be sprayed and that year, the lone person in town who did mango spraying had died; the dreamed of mango juice factory did not materialize.
“The plantation could not pay the tax of the land so we had the mango trees cut down and turned to charcoal,” Susan recalls.
In 2002, Susan resumed planting fruit trees with the rambutan toklap (the meat peels off and does not adhere to the seed) varieties. The grafted seedlings came from the Eriberto de Ocampo of Naguilian, Isabela, who, Antonio and former vice mayor Marquez Sal-ao discovered in their search for a reliable source of planting materials.
Susan said that in 2010, they netted P300,000.00-400,000.00 from their fruit trees so they decided to gradually extend their orchard by plowing back amounts from their income they could spare. At the moment, the orchard is more than a hectare.
The couple credits De Ocampo who is an accredited fruit-tree planting material propagator and whom they describe as an unselfish mentor in fruit tree technology for their breakthrough as fruit producers.
“You could be sure that what he tells you the plant will become will come true unlike when you buy from ambulant vendors and even planting material producers in other provinces like Batangas where you usually get faked,” Susan said.
She relates that many local fruit tree growers find out too late they have been fooled which she said is very damaging because of the lost growing time of the plantation.
The couple say that 90 percent of seed-propagated rambutan turn into unproductive males.
Susan said that the ambulant vendors could not even tell what rambutan variety they are selling. From their visits to the De Ocampo farm, she has learned to tell the variety of a rambutan from the texture of the leaves.
“We also learned the advantages of planting grafted plants over planting materials propagated from seedlings. They start bearing fruits while still short and do not grow tall so that it is easy to harvest from them. Other fruit planters used to argue that grafted trees do not last long but I reason that I could plant again and again in that case. After a while, they saw the advantages of planting grafted trees and they now also patronize De Ocampo,” Susan said.
The Diazes are always on the lookout for the best variety. For one, they have cut down the native fruit trees in their lot because they grow very tall and are hard to harvest from.
Also, upon learning of the Duco and Longkong lanzones varieties both of which have no seeds and sticky sap, Susan planted the trees with the plan that when they bear fruit, she will cut down the currently fruit-bearing Paete lanzones in their orchard.**By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
