Amidst the asters

With me at the aster farm are Ma'am Mely of MABS and Ms. Cecile of RB Mabitac

With me at the aster farm are Ma'am Mely of MABS, Ms. Cecile of RB Mabitac, and the aster farmers

Field Visit: A day amidst the asters
by Emy Rocero

I didn’t realize how much I loved flowers until my visit to an aster farm in Bayog, Laguna. Aster, also called Baby’s Breath, is a flower with tiny petals that radiate from a circular disk. The plant grows 12-18 inches tall and is often used by florists as fillers to bouquets. There are different colors and varieties of aster but the white one is the most famous locally.

Our visit as MABS representatives to the Rural Bank of Mabitac (RB Mabitac) led me and our Deputy Chief of Party, Ms. Mely Agabin, to the aster farm. One of our objectives in visiting RB Mabitac was to find out why there was a slow uptake of the bank’s micro agricultural lending. We also wanted to show the bank its potential to provide small farm credit to agricultural sub-sectors present in its service areas.

In RB Mabitac, Ma’am Mely and the bank’s president Ms. Cecilia Tanael, discussed the bank’s chances of gathering more information on farming activities. Ma’am Mely said that the bank will be better informed of farming activities if the locations of the crops’ (and other agricultural products) concentration of cultivation or growing are identified, studied well, and value chain analyzed.

By going to the field with us, Ms. Cecile and Mr. Ed Revilla, RB Mabitac Microfinance Program Head, had a more concrete idea of what we meant. Ms. Cecile said that there are still “plenty” of agricultural activities in District 4 of Laguna Province, which includes the towns of Mabitac (where the bank’s head office is located), Siniloan, Sta. Cruz, and Sta. Maria, among others. The bank expressed interest in continuing its micro agri lending and to concentrate in the 4^th district of Laguna.

So what did we learn from this visit? We learned that growing aster is not hard. Capitalization may be high, but the returns are double and, sometimes, even triple the investment. For a small farm lot (around 500 square meters only), a farmer would need around Php 20,000.00 for labor during land preparation, fertilizer, pesticide, and regular weeding. An aster plant starts to bear flowers on the third month from planting; the flower sells for Php 80.00 to Php 100.00 a kilo, depending on the season. The farmers we interviewed said that in February (specifically during Valentine’s Day), their small farm produces around 300 kilos of aster in the first harvest alone, and they continue to harvest 40-60 kilos every two weeks after that. Hmmm, not bad.

I enjoyed taking pictures of the cultivators harvesting asters for delivery to Dangwa Station in Manila. That afternoon, the sky was dark and rain was looming in the horizon so the farmers rushed to finish harvesting their flowers. “Wala na kaming maha-harvest kapag nabasa na ng ulan ang aster (We won’t have any aster flowers to harvest once they’re rained on),” so they said.

Each white aster floret looks very dainty and fragile. However, when several are bunched together, the aster bouquet displays strength and beauty, with or without a cut flower.