Meet Mary Grace in Masaling, Negros Island.

Mary Grace explains advantages of the Livestock Integrated Food Enterprise as a business for a woman with small children. Her greenhouse garden is near her home. She can take care of her children and do the laundry while making carbonized rice hull for soil enrichment for her business!

Mary Grace shares a recipe made with pechay, a nutritious vegetable in her Food House. Pechay Tagalog
Recipe by Dr Liza Ong

Ingredients:
Half kilo of Pechay
3 garlic cloves
1 onion sliced
Patis and pepper
Use little oil.
Procedure:
Saute (igisa) garlic, onion.
Then add pechay.
Lastly, place patis and pepper to taste.

Health benefits: Good for lowering cholesterol, diabetes, and for constipation and bowel problems. May reduce your risk for cancer.

We are expanding micro-farming businesses for women on Negros and Samar Islands, producing specialty vegetables, poultry, and hog-raising, all with high local market demand. The purpose of this project is to advance a sustainable, small-scale agricultural business, introducing and integrating best practices. Our approach is innovative because it increases agricultural profits by enhancing inputs, modifying labor throughputs, and selling products with high-market value per production unit.

LIFE projects support the following goals:

• Enable women through innovative farming with income-generating opportunities.
• Develop a small-scale integrated farming system for vegetables, chickens, and hogs.
• Establish a reputation for humane treatment of animals and a healthy environment, including production that minimizes inorganic chemicals, and recycling and disposal of waste.
• Develop a sustainable, profitable business model, including market entry and expansion plans to reach urban markets.

LIFE projects are based on integrating production in Food Houses (similar to greenhouses) with vegetables grown at waist height, making them easier to tend, and offering a space beneath the vegetables for chickens that are free to run within a fenced enclosure. Model hog and sow pens are located nearby. New Pathways’ LIFE pilot projects demonstrate significant economic benefits to participants. This business activity fits very well within the women’s daily responsibilities of child care, cooking, and helping their husbands. The Food Houses allowed participants to benefit from a relatively short business cycle for sales of vegetables and chickens, complementing the longer-term cycle associated with hog-raising.