Community Hogstel’ Program Gains More Supporters, Takers

The idea to organize and consolidate the country’s small-holder swine farmers into a cooperative or corporative entity that will own and administer a modern and bio-secure swine breeding and growing facility is gaining many supporters and early takers.
After an informal briefing on the Community Hogstel Program on Monday, Camarines Sur Congressman LRay Villafuerte, an old friend back in the days when we were both Governors, called the Hogstel concept as “a brilliant and timely idea” to alleviate the sufferings of the backyard hog farmers.
The meeting with Cong. Villafuerte was supposed to be just a get together with Agriculture Undersecretary DV Savellano, also a former Congressman and Governor of Ilocos Sur, but it turned into an agricultural briefing on the request of the Congressman who wanted to know what I was doing as a private citizen and agriculture advocate.
Cong. Villafuerte said as soon as Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel, Jr. approves the program concept, he would like a Community Hogstel Facility to be established in his home province.
The Community Hogstel Program which I personally conceptualized, designed and presented to Agriculture Undersecretary DV Savellano on Monday morning aims to address the devastation of the African Swine Fever on the country’s backyard hog sector affecting thousands of farmers.
The Hogstel Program, which literally means a “Hog Hotel Concept” involves the “establishment by government of a mega community hog production complex that is bio-secure and contains the entire production segments: Breeding and Growing, with slaughtering and processing facility, in-house feed mill and feed processing centers.”
Backyard hog farmers will own the Hogstel Facility and operate it with the help of a team of animal health experts and nutritionists, including technical people involved in the processing and marketing.
It will be an integrated farming program which will involve crops farmers in the community who will produce feeds raw materials in agricultural zones to ensure fresh feeds at lower cost and eliminate the risk of feed contamination to the ASF virus and others.
Undersecretary Savellano will officially endorse the Community Hogstel Program to Sec. Laurel next week complete with the financial projections.
This early, however, I am deeply happy that this practical concept which I developed as early as the days when I was Governor of Cotabato and recently fine-tuned by a young veterinarian who graduated on top of his post graduate course in Hungary last year, Dr. Roland Fajardo, may now be used in reviving the backyard hog industry of the country.
#GodWorksInMysteriousWays!
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!
#KungGustoMaramingParaan!
(Diagrams were prepared by Dr. Roland Fajardo while photo of our coffee session on Monday shows (from left) Usec. and former Governor DV Savellano, Cong. and former Governor LRay Villafuerte and me, former Governor of North Cotabato.)