Credit Access of Rice Farmer-Borrowers and Financial Performance of Banca Banca Primary Multipurpose Cooperative under the Laguna Credit Surety Fund Program in Victoria and Pila, Laguna, Philippines: 2010–2014

The province of Laguna and BSP launched the LCSF to help the mSMEs and most especially the cooperatives in increasing their worthiness to formal institutions. LCSF is a trust fund designed to enhance the credit worthiness and mitigate the risk of banks in extending credit to mSMEs. This program was pursued by the local government to facilitate credit access among small farmers and other small scale borrowers. BBPMPC was one of the 15 member-cooperatives of LCSF which contributed PhP100,000 to the program. The cooperative also availed loan through DBP’s credit line that was secured by LCSF, which was used to provide cash and inputs to its rice farmer-borrowers on credit.This study analyzed credit access of rice farmer-borrowers and the financial performance of Banca Banca Primary Multi-Purpose Cooperative under the Laguna Credit Surety Fund Program in Laguna covering the period 2010 to 2014.  Thirty five rice farmer-borrowers of BBPMPC in the municipalities of Victoria and Pila in Laguna were interviewed during the conduct of the study.The result of the study showed that the rice farmer-borrowers reduced their borrowing from other sources after the cooperative availed LCSF. It was due to increased amount of loan granted to the rice farmer-borrowers. As for the loan utilization and repayment performance of the rice farmer-borrowers, most of them utilized funds only for farm operations and had fully paid their loans from the cooperative. The rice farmer-borrowers were also very satisfied with the lending operation of the cooperative.  In general, it was found out that: LCSF was seen to be beneficial to BBPMPC because it provided the rice farmer-borrowers easier access to credit and LCSF helped improve the financial standing of BBPMPC.    Therefore, LCSF should improve information dissemination to encourage more cooperatives into their program. This would further extend credit to farmers and provide technical assistance to its members.

Biorefining of pigeon pea:Residue conversion by pyrolysis

Pyrolysis is an important technology to convert lignocellulosic biomass to a renewable liquid energy carrier known as pyrolysis oil or bio-oil. Herein we report the pyrolysis of pigeon pea wood, a widely available biomass in the Philippines, in a semi-continuous reactor at gram scale. The effects of process conditions such as temperature (400-600 ◦C), nitrogen flow rate (7-15 mL min−1) and particle size of the biomass feed (0.5-1.3 mm) on the product yields were determined. A Box-Behnken three-level, three-factor fractional factorial design was carried out to establish process-product yield relations. Of particular interest is the liquid product (bio-oil), of which the yield was shown to depend on all independent variables in a complex manner. The optimal conditions for highest bio-oil yield (54 wt.% on dry feed intake) were a temperature of 466 ◦C, a nitrogen flow rate of 14 mL min−1 and a particle size of 1.3 mm. Validation of the optimized conditions proved that the average (n = 3) experimental bio-oil yield (52 wt.%) is in good agreement with the predicted value from the model. The properties of product oils were determined using various analytical techniques including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), gel-permeation chromatography (GPC), nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (13C- and HSQC-NMR) and elemental and proximate analyses. The bio-oils were shown to have low ash content (0.2%), high heating value (29 MJ kg−1) and contain high value-added phenolics compounds (41%, GC peak area) as well as low molecular weight aldehydes and carboxylic acids. GPC analysis indicated the presence of a considerable amount of higher molecular weight compounds. NMR measurements showed that a large proportion of bio-oil contains aliphatic carbons (~60%), likely formed from the decomposition of (hemi)cellulose components, which are abundantly present in the starting pigeon pea wood. Subsequent preliminary scale-up pyrolysis experiments in a fluidized bed reactor (~100 gfeed h−1, 475 ◦C and N2 flow rate of 1.5 L min−1) gave a non-optimized bio-oil yield of 44 wt.%. Further fractionation and/or processing are required to upgrade these bio-oils to biofuels and biobased chemicals

Socio-Economic and Environmental Assessment of a Microcontroller-Based Coffee Roasting Machine: Implications for Market Potential and Technology Commercialization

The study assesses the socio-economic and environmental performance leading to the commercialization of the micro-controller-based coffee roasting machine for smallscale roasting operations. Key informant interview and coffee farmers’ survey were conducted to assess the farmer- respondents’ perceptions of coffee roasting machines and availability of resources. Results show that the designed coffee roaster almost fits the farmers’ criteria in selecting coffee roasting machine. Coffee farmers perceived the machine to be a very good technology as evidenced by its highly acceptable rating. Investment analysis reveals that using the roaster for custom work would be a profitable business with an IRR of 76% and benefit-cost ratio of 1.44. Moreover, even with the additional costs due to roasting, an average coffee farmer with one-hectare farm will get an additional income of PhP 28,240.00 from coffee roasting or an equivalent of PhP 70.6 per kilo of dried berries roasted instead of selling green berries

Adoption and Socio-Economic Impacts of the Pre-Harvest Disease Management Technology for Carabao Mango in the Philippines

This study was conducted to determine the adoption and socio-economic impacts of the pre–harvest disease management project on anthracnose and stem-end rot control and production cost reduction through need-based fungicide spraying and fruit bagging funded by PCAARRD. Results of the survey of 141 mango farm owners, share-holders and mango contractors in various provinces of the Philippines show that 69% of the respondents fully adopted need-based spraying and fruit bagging while 26% adopted either need-based spraying or bagging. The rest of the mango growers totally refrained from using these techniques in their operations since they do not aim to sell their produce on a commercial scale. The project benefited the Carabao mango industry in terms of increased yield and reduced post–harvest losses. The benefit-cost analysis showed that the return to R&D investment and mango growers’ production costs amounted to more than 100% which is much higher than the opportunity cost of money (12%). For the social impacts, 82% of the full adopters and 86% of partial adopters reported that their level of living improved after the adoption of the technology. The benefits to the industry could still increase if more mango growers adopt the technology. There is a need to further promote the technology in other mango producing areas in the country