FLEET OF DA TRACTORS
TO PLOW LANAO FARMS
Marawi City, July 17 – In complete contrast to the scenes months ago when military tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled through the streets of Marawi City, farm tractors ranging from 35 horsepower to 100hp, filled the frontage of the City Hall on Tuesday to mark the launching of the farm mechanization and agricultural rehabilitation of a city which was ravaged by months of bloody conflict which claimed hundreds of lives.
A total of 46 farm tractors were brought in from the different regions of the country as each DA regional office was tasked to support President Rody Duterte’s rehabilitation program for Marawi and Lanao del Sur.
A task group headed by DA Assistant Secretary Andrew Villacorta and supported Region X Director Carlene Collado and the SAAD group under Director Bernadette San Juan is implementing the program.
Two local focal persons, both Maranaws whom I have known forty years ago have been tapped to handle the actual operations of the program – Omar Mohammad and Sabdullah Macapodi.
Both Omar and Sabdulla worked with me in the then National Grains Authority as information officers.
Omar rose to the rank of assistant regional director of the National Food Authority until he retired while Sabdullah served as City Administrator of Marawi.
Under the program, DA will provide free tractor services to every Marawi and Lanao del Sur farmer who will ask for it.
The operators are local boys who were trained by the DA in operating and maintaining the equipment.
This will be supported with rice and corn seeds, including high value vegetables, and the fertilizer requirement.
Since the program is directly supervised by the DA, I expect it to succeed, much unlike other programs in the past which were just handed down to the local government units and dubious groups which resulted in a failure.
The produce from the DA-assisted farms is assured by a market as private groups like PILMICO have committed to buy the corn production of Marawi and Lanao farmers.
On Tuesday, I led the field launching of the program by operating a 108-HP Kubota tractor equipped with a disc plow and made just one round of a field which will soon be planted with corn.
It was my way of showing to people that as a boy who grew up in the farm, I certainly understand what I am talking about and I know the realities of farming.
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