Cindy CINDY S. Reyes S. REYES
RiceBIS ZARAGOZA
Cooperation makes
“silong ng mangga” progressive PERRY IRISH H. DURAN For people in the city area, “see you at SM” means “meeting at a shopping mall”. Interestingly, to the facilitators and farmer-cooperators of the Rice Business Innovations System (RiceBIS) Community Program at Brgys. Macarse and Mayamot, Zaragoza, Nueva Ecija, “SM” stands for “Silong ng Mangga”. Such was the expression during the program’s early years of implementation when the villages in the area still had not much – no facilities nor offices, just 14
PHILRICE MAGAZINE JAN-MAR 2021
nature’s gifts. Fast forward to today, the “password” still rings a bell, nature still generously gives, and yet both Macarse and Mayamot communities are considerably more progressive.
Meeting mentality In 2017, RiceBIS led by Dr. Aurora Corales of PhilRice made a nationwide search for rice-farming barangays to be its pilot sites. The program aims to establish model communities where farmers increase
their yield, lower their production cost, and are linked to market and business development service providers. Eight pilot sites were established in the first year and Zaragoza was one of them. Specifically, the Pinagbuklod na Adhika Credit Cooperative (PNACC), led by Chairperson Francisco Ignacio, was the farmer group in Macarse that embraced RiceBIS. At the beginning, meetings were held at “SM”; eventually, through the grants secured through the program, PNACC
