A French kababayan

Monsieur Patrick Renucci is now a kababayan. The French-Italian national who is married to Rachel Renucci-Tan, a Pinay born and raised in Makati, has just been declared a Filipino by an act of Congress, RA 11733.

No, Patrick is not a basketball player who must be made a Filipino to qualify to join our team in the FIBA championship. He is an entrepreneur who met and married a Pinay investment banker in Paris.  He was so filled with an urge to help the Typhoon Yolanda victims in Leyte that it changed his life.

Patrick and Rachel made the incredible decision to leave behind the good life in Paris and move to Alang-alang, Leyte. This is so surprising at a time when many Filipinos have lost hope in this country and are buying golden visas to move to Spain and Portugal.

Rachel isn’t even from Leyte. I don’t think she speaks Waray. But as Rachel recalls it, they saw how badly the people needed long-term relief to upgrade the quality of their lives. What struck Patrick most were the rice fields and the rice being dried in the highway. Surely, there are better ways of doing things.

They did their due diligence like any investment banker and made their decision to risk what they have to help the farmers of Alang-alang produce and sell better rice in a better way. Patrick did a quick study of rice farming and what it will take to bring rice farming in Alang-alang to modern times.

The basic stuff stood out. The farmers need good seeds, good fertilizer, and good post-harvest facilities.

The Renuccis might have closed their eyes as they threw half a billion pesos to put up the infrastructure and the ecosystem to properly grow rice with improved productivity, state-of-the-art post-harvest facility, and to recover as much as they can selling rice in the market.

Their modern rice post-harvest handling facility properly dries the palay (unhusked rice) and stores it in silos at controlled temperature and humidity level. That saves a lot of palay usually wasted while being dried on the highway and makes it possible to sell at the best prices.

Setting up the facility was the easy part. Getting enough palay to feed the rice mill was the challenge. It requires working with farmers and the communities who are used to dealing with traders who work with politicians in a system that keeps our farmers forever in debt and poor.

Patrick wanted to get his feet wet planting, growing, and harvesting rice. They bought some rice fields and developed a community of farmers who will provide the palay that the facility will process.

It wasn’t easy. Patrick caught schistosomiasis twice for exposing his feet in the rice fields of Leyte. That’s snail fever, the age-old problem of Leyte that could be fatal. Patrick survived the infections, but he required emergency heart surgery in 2021, at the height of the pandemic.

“And yet by the Grace of God, he has prevailed. We have prevailed. We remain determined to fulfill His Kingdom’s work,” Rachel said.

As Rachel puts it, “Patrick gave his heart to the Filipino people. With his bare hands, anchored in the technology that he personally developed from scratch, we produced rice that was awarded third best rice in the world (a first for our country).”

Patrick also built a Farm Academy and is now educating thousands of young farmers in high-tech farming.

Patrick even developed and tested a locally produced all-natural foliage fertilizer that is 70 percent cheaper than imported chemical fertilizer. Rachel claims they can supply the whole country. We won’t have to import expensive fertilizer that destroys the soil, she said.

How does their system work? The key, Rachel explained, is to buy directly from the farmers at a price that is higher than what’s left in their pockets from the traders. Farmers cry when they see us coming with our trucks, Rachel claims, they feel saved.

None of those things went unnoticed. The rice industry in our country is composed of seasoned traders allied with politicians profiting off the miseries of the rice farmers for generations. They don’t like competition.

These folks were not happy. Local politicians beholden to the traders even publicly said they wished the Renuccis would not succeed. Never mind that they are the biggest buyer of rice in the province now. The rice cartel is threatened by this French-Filipino couple and they make sure they feel unwanted.

Funding was a challenge. According to a comment of Apa Ongpin on my FB post, the Renuccis approached the Land Bank of the Philippines and were asked: “Why are you putting a brand-new rice mill in that area? It is very poor. The mill will fail.”

The Renuccis said they wanted to build in Alang-alang precisely BECAUSE it is poor. They were told the bank would only lend them the money if they built the mill in Central Luzon.

That is the kind of mind-set at Landbank that made it a successful commercial bank. But it has forgotten its reason for being a government bank to help farmers.

Rachel explains: “We are 100 percent out of the box, so now the business competes with cheap rice from India and Pakistan, with local rice mixed with cheap imported rice.

“Are we insane? YES. Do we regret investing this much? NO. We disrupted an entire industry. Our failure would mean failure of the entire rice industry of this country. Can we fail? OF COURSE!

“Most of the investment is our own equity. Very simple. What bank would lend 90 to 100 percent of total investment cost? Most you get would be 30 percent for a high-risk startup!!!

“We thrive on e-commerce where we are the biggest player. This is where we sell our premium rice at very good margins. We also sell successfully to wholesalers in the Visayas who buy in large volumes.

“Boo – in this country – nobody innovates. Everyone wants to bring down a good business that innovates and brings much value to our farmers, our people. CRAB MENTALITY. That is why we are where we are today!”

What can I say? Welcome Kababayan Patrick! Mabuhay ka!

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco