Hi everyone,

I am Felipe Velasquez recently retired from a pineapple company and now attending to my small farm in South Cotabato. Ten years before my retirement I started a small farm about 3 hectares. I planted pineapple in the beginning. However, I planned to establish black pepper production so I left a one meter vacant row every 3 meter interval. This way I can plant my rows of black pepper later on. Now I have a fully established farm covering more or less two hectares but, of course, with some mortalities.  No more pineapple after 4 harvest seasons. The other one hectare I planted lakatan but still learning the techniques. I enrolled and finished the Banana3 and Banana1 courses. I still want to learn about the Banana2 course.

My goal eventually is to spread the technology to small households in our parish with some space in their yard if they don't have farm. That way they can produce even small quantity of product in their backyard as additional income. The only return that I want them to give back is a 10% of their income but not to me but for their church. I initially planned this for black pepper but I had a hard time propagating seedling successfully with small mortality. I am still searching for a better method of black pepper propagation. The only source that I can come up with is from India experience.

I wanted to learn about Ube production also for the same reason as above. I am thinking of Ube to be less complicated but the value is not the same as banana or black pepper.

This is all for now.

Happy learning everyone..