Profitable milk factory in your home
With only P1,400, you can have a profitable soymilk factory right in your own kitchen. This supports a very promising small enterprise that I described last week in my commentary, “Mechanization enables P50 to become P5,000.”
In summary, if one plants soy seeds worth P50 a kilo, this will result in 25 kilos of soybeans in only three months. This can then be processed into 200 liters of soymilk worth P9,200 and 12.5 kilos of processed soy veggie meat worth P1,250. The actual enterprise I visited in Leyte resulted in P5,000 in cash from soymilk, with the rest of the produce given for free by the farmer to his family and neighbors.
Because of this large outpouring of interest (almost 2000 shares in the last 5 days on the Internet), I decided to write about the marketing aspects of this soymilk enterprise. First, what is its market? Second, how should you market this?
Identify the market
From the website of the Philippine National Dairy Authority (www.nda.da.gov.ph), I constructed the table below with the latest available annual data.
MILK SUPPLY (2014)
P Million Share
Local Production 628.9 1.6 %
Imports 38,895.3 98.4%
Total Supply 39524.2 100%
From the above table, we note that we produce less than 2 percent of our total need, all of this is coming from animal protein.
Why should we give jobs to other nationalities by importing so much milk? And why do we give so little attention to more nutritious, less expensive, and locally produced soymilk? We should instead replace a large part of dairy imports with local soymilk, thus improving nutrition and job creation.
On a very small scale, a farmer can have a P1,400 soy processing machine being advocated by Director Rex Bingabing ( 0921-998 7775) of DA’s Philippine Center for Post Harvest Development and Mechanization (PHILMECH). This will process the soybeans from the farmer and his neighbors into soymilk, as well as provide the soy residue that can become veggie meat. This can be used even in the remotest barangay because it doesn’t need electricity. The P9,200 calculated from soymilk sales based on a price of only P46 a liter, substantially cheaper than the P86 a liter for whole fat milk now sold in Manila.
We should also note that the Department of Education (DepEd) has significantly increased its school feeding program. I have personal knowledge of the impact of nutrition on a child’s ability to learn. Our ADMU 616569’s Father Lenny Sumpaico, SJ, Feeding Program has shown that of its 5,000 primary school undernourished beneficiaries, more than 80 percent increased their grades, which was a direct result of their increased weight and improved nutrition.
Under the Aquino administration, DepEd doubled its 2011 P207 billion budget to P412 billion in 2016. It has similarly increased its school feeding program budget. Unfortunately, the milk it provides is imported animal-based protein. This is a large market soymilk must get a much larger share in.
How to market
The first market to address is the community. An example I personally witnessed illustrates this.
The Kababaihang Barangay ng San Miguel, Bulacan was cited by the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) as the best woman empowerment economic project in Asia in 1984. It was recognized as the best in the world in 1989.
Subsequently, the members embarked on producing carabao milk, which they planned to send to a factory that would process this into pastillas. However, when word got around, their neighbors went to their houses carrying their own containers and bought all their milk, leaving none for pastillas production.
In a similar way, those with a P1,400-soymilk factory can become both a processing facility and a milk station, similar to a water station. Benefiting from almost no overhead, the farmers producing the seeds can bring back the soymilk in their containers and sell this at a very low price to their neighbors. They may even add sugar or chocolate to increase the selling price and make more money!
On a larger scale, they can duplicate what Sister Eloisa David (0917 853 2775) has done in post-Yolanda’s Tacloban, Leyte. With the same P400,000 soy-processing machine promoted by PHILMECH, farmers can produce soybeans on a larger scale and send their soybeans to this larger factory. They can then market beyond their small community and arrange contracts with DepEd and other outlets that have a need for more nutritious and less expensive soymilk.
Structure needed
Rosemary Aquino, Chair of DA’s National Soybean Program Technical Working Group (0915-4622438), says that the potential of soymilk has barely been tapped. Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala should be commended for starting this program.
However, DA should now systematically involve critical government agencies to make this program succeed as a key component for inclusive growth. A national soy task force should include DepEd for its large untapped feeding program market; the Department of Social Welfare and Development to target the poor; the Department of Trade and Industry to help strategize gaining a larger market share of the current 98.4 percent foreign dominated domestic milk market; and the appropriate Local Government Unit (LGU) champion who can mobilize LGUs to take advantage of this tremendous untapped opportunity. This can be catalyzed by promoting the benefits from a P1,400 soymilk factory in your own home.
(The author is Chair of Agriwatch. For inquiries and suggestions, email [email protected] or telefax (02) 852-2112)
