Who would have thought that a farmers’ cooperative that started with a capital of Php3,500 in 1973 would grow into an empire of empowered farmer-entrepreneurs with total assets of Php1.7 billion?

It definitely was not out of sheer luck but of a deeply embedded culture of accountability, integrity, and will power of members to rise from a life of dearth to sufficiency, if not of total abundance. Above all, leaders and members of the cooperative firmly believe that their faith in God has brought them far and wide.

The Lamac Multipurpose Cooperative (LMPC), with head office in barangay Parian, Cebu City, operates on a clear vision to alleviate poverty among members of vulnerable sectors such as marginal farmers, fishers, persons with disabilities, women, youth, and the elderly.

This sublime purpose has led LMPC to reach out, from 70 farmer-members when it began operation, to over 80,000 regular members at present, excluding some 18,000 youth-members.

Its operation now spans Visayas wide with 33 branches.

It was when it got registered to the Cooperative Development Authority in March 1992 that lending institutions started to notice them. The first to offer them a credit line of Php1 million was the Land Bank of the Philippines.

“We were hesitant at first to grab the offer because we thought that we are not yet capable of paying that big amount of loan. We asked God to lead us in that milestone decision,” Elena Limocon, LMPC’s general manager, recalled.

It did not take them long to decide on the matter. They accepted the offer because business, anyway, is about risk-taking, the General Manager added.

With that loan, LMPC started to flourish. Today, the co-op manages enterprises such as a bakery, a water system, distributorship, a co-op mart, agro-enterprises, and resorts. The newest addition to its agri-related ventures is the dairy buffalo-based enterprise.

The dairy business, in partnership with the PCC@ USF, started in 2015 with the establishment of a Dairy Buffalo Multiplier Farm in Pinamungajan, Cebu. In the same year, enabling mechanisms such as study tours to dairy production farms and trainings on products development and processing were conducted.

“Our approach in helping our members is holistic. We go beyond lending,” Elena said.

She explains, “We also prepare members to start up their own business and help them all throughout the journey. We have a business development center that handles all agroenterprise concerns. We purposely hired an agriculturist for every commodity to help our farmers.”

After a series of trainings on processing milkbased products, LMPC began mainstreaming buffalo’s milk-based products with the opening of a pasalubong center immediately the following year in Poblacion, Pinamungajan in partnership with the LGU and the DTI. Another marketing arm, the Dairy Box, was established in 2017 in Parian, Cebu City.

Complementing these products outlets, it was also in the same year that LMPC inked a partnership with PCC and the Cebu Technological University to conduct a buffalo’s milk feeding program with children and the elderly as project beneficiaries.

In 2018, LMPC has seen its efforts in trailblazing the dairy industry bear fruits in the town of Pinamungajan, which in the Tagalog dialect is “pinamungahan” meaning “where it has borne fruit”. One of the town’s barangays, Punod, actively engaged in the program.

Several activities related to boost the program in the area were started including capability enhancement trainings, the dispersal of dairy buffaloes to farmers, groundbreaking and construction of a multi-million dairy processing plant, launching of buffalo’s milk feeding program, launching of the 1st Carabao Festival in the barangay, declaration of barangay Punod as the “Dairy Capital of the Municipality of Pinamungajan”, and the LGU signifying its total support to the program.

With what is obtaining so far, in the next three years as planned out in its five-year “Dairy Production Development Plan”, LMPC projects to have dispersed 120 buffaloes to farmers in Punod and adjacent barangays and should be producing 180,675 liters of milk for possible expansion of its milk feeding program and for its various dairy products. By 2022, they are also expecting to have opened five Dairy Box outlets where the coop’s products will be sold.

Guillerma Abay-abay, PCC@USF’s development officer and CBED coordinator, said working with LMPC has established that consistent hard work and full commitment are important in ensuring the success of the CBED program.

“The LMPC management is decidedly serious about making dairying work in Pinamungajan and later on in all its other branches across the Visayas,” Guillerma said.

“The co-op wants to demonstrate that there is indeed money in the countryside so there is no need for people, mainly those already engaged in farming, to abandon their farmlands to explore the cities,” she added.

One must ask: “So, what has kept LMPC succeeding and even earning multitude of accolades when other co-ops have died a natural death?”

General Manager Elena has this inspiring reply: “Upon their orientation as new members of the co-op, we walk them through our story—of how small we started and the challenges that we hurdled to make it this far. Then we make them understand their purpose as to why God designed them to become farmers and not a different profession. We teach them to be accountable to that God-given purpose.”

This teaching on stewardship seemed to have appealed positively to the co-op’s farmermembers as shown in their commitment to the advocacy of LMPC and their perseverance to succeed in their respective ventures.