Intensive Learning-by-Doing in the Agribusiness of Black Pepper – 2 of 2

BSFil Black Pepper Pilot Farm

The question, “If the financial returns are so good, why is everybody not doing it?” is a fair one to ask with black pepper as well as with coffee.

BSFil Technologies has done the science and the practice (in a long-standing pilot farm) with black pepper (Piper Nigrum) on Gliricidia (madre de cacao or kakawate). STI-Learning on black pepper, like coffee with Nestle, is ready to share.

BSFil Technologies, with inputs from experts at the nearby University of the Philippines at Los Baños, used Scan-Adapt-Diffuse as technique to find the appropriate technology in P. nigrum black pepper for an emerging market like the Philippines.

Please note the different colors of the leaves in the picture above: kakawate has light green and small leaves on top while black pepper has large, dark green and lustrous leaves below.  Beautiful!

As with Nestle’s approach with coffee, BSFil’s approach was systematic starting with variety selection (the Menzi) through propagation, cultivation, harvest and post-harvest. And, likewise, the yield at the pilot farm is in multiples of the national average. Over the highs and lows of domestic and import prices, the pilot farm has been profitable.

BSFil, a Filipino-owned company, knows about black pepper prices and commerce because it is a major domestic player in fine food ingredients – including spices, meat processing and savory ingredients.  Its entrepreneur-owner is an (agricultural) engineer of the traditional mold who enjoys designing all the processing equipment. He was a former teacher at UPLB and outstanding alumnus for the year 2001.

He loves farming and has developed other products like dehydrated gabi (See Post #70). There are other high-value crops on development and pilot (still confidential). He believes, as I do, that agriculture can contribute a lot to the country. Like Nestle, he is open to sharing the technology with farmers so BSFil can reduce imports, buy local and help Filipino farmers. Given the available, path-created high yield technology, the expectation was for farmers to take advantage of the extension.

As with coffee, one issue typically raised in extension efforts with black pepper is financing. Both are perennial crops with annual harvest cycles. First harvest is in two years for coffee and three years for black pepper with peak yields starting around the fifth year. Hence, a substantial financial commitment is needed to get into the business. BSFil, like Nestle, offers to buy farm produce at market prices. (See Post #91 for more on Financing)

But as I mentioned in the previous Post #88, the bigger barrier to success in extension seems to be that to attain the high yield and the consequent financial return requires a change in corporate culture from traditional farming to the industrial, agribusiness mode. Each step that builds the yield must be religiously done regardless of the ‘season’ otherwise with each step missed a consequent and proportional drop in yield is experienced. The gap between high pilot farm yields to the low national average is the story of such missed steps.

In that sense, for example, I do not see the Filipino farmer ever succeeding at dairy as the Kiwis do. I lived in New Zealand for a few years and dairy farming is a hard life. The cows and the milk truck coming to collect milk twice each day dictate the dairy farmer’s life day in and day out. A typical New Zealand dairy farm will be 300 hectares with 300 cows and five (5) to nine (9) farmers working including the owner. Granted that there is a lot of capital and automation, the hardest part is the daily grind, the discipline of milking cows twice a day. And, other than common-srvice R&D laboratories at the regional level, the government does not provide any subsidy so the industry must compete doubly hard against subsidized European and American farmers. The Kiwi farmers have stopped complaining and just go on with the daily drudge.

Black pepper and coffee, as with any agribusiness like dairy, needs detail management of the input-output relationship, ie with nutrients, water and the sun to maximize harvest. Like the New Zealand pine pole that needs to be tricked to grow straight up, regular work like removing extra stems, shoots and spikes are needed so the nutrients go directly to the fruit. Height management through de-topping is important, for example to reduce the cost of harvesting. Both coffee and black pepper require manual and selective harvesting of the berries over three months.  These are the similarities.

Rich Harvest Coming (Note Water Drain at Background)

Black pepper is different from coffee in other respects. It likes some shade; coffee loves the sun. Black pepper likes well-drained soil; coffee needs some water. Coffee prefers high lands while black pepper does not mind the low altitude. Black pepper is a vine while coffee is a tree that brings me to the final points.

To a Harvest of 5MT/ha Green (1.5MT/ha Black)

In the Philippines, black pepper is recommended to be raised on gliricidia (kakawate or madre de cacao) for hilly contour farms – note the two stems in left picture. Other than providing a natural trellis for the vine, it can be topped higher than black pepper to provide the needed shade.   (Another recommendation is for concrete posts as faster and long lasting.)

Gliricidia is also leguminous and so has nitrogen-fixing bacteria to capture this needed nutrient. Its de-topped leaves and branches are just layered on the ground to provide weed-controlling mulch. A substantial reduction in urea fertilizer to be applied has been observed with this method.

Finally, black-pepper-on-kakawate in a contour farm has been proven to control erosion in deforested slopes in a technology called SALT – Sloping Agricultural Land Technology. It has been proven from agro-forestry research pioneered in Bansalan, Davao del Sur since the 1970s to actually rejuvenate our bare hills. SALT (and pepper) is the subject of our next Post #90.

Farm Project Site

I do have a land-use farm project that may combine coffee and black pepper in a 50-hectare highland farm using SALT as cropping system. As agro-forestry, the project is a form of afforestation and will qualify for carbon credits if converted to a bigger scale.

For me, it is an interesting opening into intensive learning using agro-forestry to gain total factor productivity and contribute to alleviating climate change for the country. My proponents are farming gentry who have worked the land. I will work hard with them to prove this agribusiness opportunity proves it full potential.

Click here for Part 1 of 2.