By Manny Piñol
Miagao, Iloilo – Bulb onion farmers in the southern towns of Iloilo Province are literally smiling from ear-to-ear as the buying price of their produce reached unprecedented levels of between P45 to P50 per kilo.
With financing support from the Production Loan Easy Access (PLEA) Program of the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) of the Department of Agriculture, the farmers also increased their production to an average of 11-metric tons per hectare.
Miagao Mayor Macario Napulan said that the P20-M PLEA fund provided by DA-ACPC resulted in the expansion of the Bulb Onion farms from about 50-hectares two years ago to 210 hectares located in Miagao and Oton towns.
In today’s harvest festival in Barangay Durog, Miagao, two outstanding Bulb Onion farmers reported that they earned about P200,000 from a 3,000-square meter where they planted onions.
After paying their PLEA Loan amounting to P45,000, each of them earned a net income of P150,000 after only three months.
Bulb Onion and Garlic are planted in the southern towns of Iloilo during the off-planting season in rain-fed rice areas.
Low prices because of unabated smuggling, however, discouraged farmers resulting in the reduction of the planted areas.
Last year, I visited Miagao and formed a group of farmers led by DA Director Remelyn Recoter and Mayor Napulan which travelled to India to learn new techniques in Bulb Onion farming.
A loan facility of P20-M under the PLEA Program was also made available through the Rural Bank of Miagao.
The planted area dramatically expanded to 210-hectares with an estimated yield of 2.3-million kilos this year.
A cold storage is scheduled to be constructed in Miagao this year as farmers in Southern Iloilo aim to expand their planted area to 2,000-hectares.
In today’s forum with the farmers, I committed enough loan funds to finance the 2,000-hectare expansion for next year.
(Photos of the Bulb Onion Harvest Festival in Miagao, Iloilo today taken by Mayette Tudlas, OSEC.)
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