Ricardo

Ricardo Lequido is a 44 year old farmer who lives in the village of Valencia, Alegria in Cebu province. He started doing farming works at a very young age because both his parents are farmers too. He is married to Josephine and have four children, two sons and two daughters. Two of his children are working and the other two are attending school. He finds farming business a good source of income as long as he works hard and have funds to finance his farming expenses.

Ricardo Lequido plough two areas of land. The land he plough is not his (he has a shareholders contract with the landowner), he does not pay rent to the landowner in return the landowner gets a share of the harvested crops in return for Ricardo using the farmland.

Ricardo can easily work from one farm to the other because both the areas are not far from each other. The first farm area is about 4,000 square meters where he grows cabbages and spring onions. He recently harvested cabbages but there are still a few left. He started another cropping of cabbages (7,000 seedlings) three weeks ago but he did not allow us to take photo of it. On his second farm found at the bottom of the mountain, he plan to grow eggplants there. He already have six cans of eggplant seeds that is ready to be planted in his nursery. He pays for the water he uses to water his crops. Usually he pays between 2,000 to 3,000 pesos (about £ 30.66 to £46) a month.

Before, he joined the MFI-Lamac, Ricardo used his previous sales to finance his farming expenses. There are times when his income is low so during the low time he could only finance his small cropping. When he became a member of co-op over a year ago, his farming business continued because he have available funds to finance his business. His first receives a loan of 20,000 pesos (about £ 306.73) and the second loan was 50,000 pesos (about £ 766.76). He successfully repaid the two previous loans he received from LAMAC smoothly and had extra funds to buy construction materials to build concrete walls for his house.

He has now applied for a larger loan from LWC which is 100,000 pesos (about £1533.61). Ricardo will use the loan to buy 30 sacks of fertilisers that cost 1,200 pesos (about £ 18.40) each sack and six types of crop protection products that cost about 25,000 pesos (about £ 383.33). He will not buy these farm inputs at one go, he will save the loan money with the co-op in his account and withdraw the money when he needs to buy the necessary farming inputs.

Ricardo will set aside a portion of the loan to pay for the four temporary workers he will hire in the future like preparing the lands and transplanting the seedlings. He does not employ regular workers to save labour expenses. His wife Josephine and two of his children help in the farm during weekends.

Ricardo is positive that with this loan, his farming business will continue to progress and his income will eventually increase. He promise to repay the loan over the period of fourteen months and in lump sum repayment, see the repayment schedule below for more details.