Best Friends From Australia Came Back To The Philippines To Farm For The People
Agriculture|September 2019
OVERSEAS WORKERS and best friends Jessie Salazar and Josie Ramos, returned to the Philippines after living in Australia for almost half of their lives to help people in poor communities. This led them to establish a social enterprise that mainly profits from growing mushrooms called Best Life Is Serving Society Farm, or simply, Bliss Farm.
Nikky Necessario
Best Friends From Australia Came Back To The Philippines To Farm For The People

Bliss Farm is located in Pajo, Alfonso, Cavite, a place that has great weather for growing mushrooms. Bliss was established in January 2017 and became fully operational on March of the same year. The 1.6-hectare farm produces 150-200kg of mushrooms per day, as per the demand of Mom’s Haus of Mushroom, their main client. In total, their huts have 85,000 fruiting bags where they grow their mushrooms. Currently, Bliss has around 20 staff members and is planning on expanding operations for larger mushroom production. The farm proudly produces their own fruiting bags and mushroom growing materials except for the kusot (wood shavings) and darak (bran) used as substrate. The farm is all natural since they do not use pesticides.

Ramos said that growing and harvesting mushrooms take six to eight weeks. First, they prepare and mix the substrate (raw materials). Then, the substrate would be put inside the fruiting bags. The bags would then be sterilized before planting the spawn inside. After being planted, the spawn would be given some time to grow, which is the incubation period. The next step is to hang the fruiting bags inside huts until the mushrooms are ready to harvest.

This story is from the September 2019 edition of Agriculture.

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This story is from the September 2019 edition of Agriculture.

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