By Manny Piñol
The resumption of the regional visits which I started as early as May this year called Biyaheng Bukid did not start very well last Tuesday morning as I and my team got stuck inside a plane in the airport runway in Manila for two hours.
What was supposed to be a one-hour flight turned out to be a 3-hour-long agony was the early morning rains in Manila prevented our place from taking off.
Arriving in Dumaguete at about 12 noon, I was met by the Governors of the two provinces in Negros Island – Gov. Alfredo Marañon of Negros Occidental and Gov. Roel Degamo of Negros Oriental – and the mayors of Dumaguete City and other towns.
At the plaza of Dumaguete City, P6-M worth of equipment were turned over to the different municipalities after which I proceeded to the Siliman University for a forum with civil society groups on “Green Convergence.”
The forum, which was attended by delegates from all over the country including young student leaders, became a lively exchange of ideas as I presented to them the Dept. of Agriculture’s Climate Change adaptation and mitigation programs.
The climax of my very quick Dumaguete visit was the consultative forum I held with stakeholders in agriculture, including officials of line agencies of government involved in agriculture.
With the presence of Gov. Degamo and DA Asst. Secretary for the Visayas Hansel Didulo and the OIC-Director of DA in the Negros Island Region, I once again heard the problems of farmers and fisherfolk who felt that they were not getting enough support from government.
The livestock growers, for example, complained that they do not have the good genetics for their hog-raising program and even their goat raising program has to rely on local goat breeds.
They also brought out the problem of the very small income they get from raising hogs and livestock.
I pointed out to them that unless the livestock raisers, especially hog raisers, organise themselves and establish their own feed mills to serve the needs of their members, they will always be at a losing end.
The establishment of a local feed mill which uses local materials and creates jobs among the people in the rural area is the key to a successful livestock and even poultry business in the countryside.
Relying on commercial feeds, whose manufacturers actually also source their raw materials from the countryside and process these in their factories in the big cities to be shipped back to the provinces again, would simply mean that the income of the farmers would be either slim or none.
At the end of the forum, I committed P10-M for a feed mill in Negros Oriental and another P10-M for a feed mill in Negros Occidental.
Yesterday, I called up Asst. Secretary for Livesock Dr. Enrico Garzon to ensure that good hog and goat breeding materials are sent to the island to improve the genetics of these animals in Negros.
(Photos of the farmers forum and the Siliman University Green Convergence forum taken by John Pagaduan.)
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