The Department of Agriculture (DA) is overhauling its live cattle-importation program, removing the direct distribution of animals to farmers, as it failed to achieve the goal of the government to improve the local sector’s productivity.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol has always pointed out that the direct distribution of live animals to individuals did more harm than good, stressing that most of the time, the animals distributed to individuals were eventually sold or slaughtered.
“It did not work; and it would not work,” Piñol told the BusinessMirror, referring to the DA’s previous direct animal-distribution system to farmers. “We will not repeat the same mistake all over again.”
This time, Piñol said, the agriculture department would venture into a new system that aims to increase the country’s cattle herd to 5 million, from the current 2.5 million, before President Duterte steps down from office.
“Unlike the failed cattle-development program in the past where imported animals were turned over individually to farmers, which eventually were either sold or slaughtered, the Livestock and Dairy Program under the administration of President Duterte will implement the ‘Multiplier Farm Concept,’ where breeding and dairy farms with 100 heads each will be established as a community project and managed by groups of farmers,” Piñol said.
Under this new system, the DA would band cattle and dairy farmers into one cooperative to handle one unit of multiplier farm, according to Piñol.
Each multiplier farm would have a minimum of 100 heifers and would serve as a breeding farm, a dairy-production area and a learning center.
He added that they would also encourage more woman-raisers to participate in the program, as they are more efficient than their male counterparts.
“We will have to organize the farmers. And I am more inclined in women participation, for women empowerment,” he said. “Because women actually are more conscientious, more industrious and patient.”
Of its P60.6-billion proposed budget for next year, the DA is allocating P1 billion for the importation of 10,000 Girolando cattle from Brazil in 2018.
This importation program is part of the DA’s five-year dairy road map that seeks to ramp up local milk production to meet at least 10 percent of annual domestic requirement by 2022 and reduce the country’s reliance on imports.
Piñol added that another P1 billion would come from the Philippine Rural Development Project’s i-REAP component, which will be utilized for the construction of shelters and multiplier farms.
Furthermore, the DA would be engaging the local government units (LGU) for the land where the multiplier farms will be built. “The LGUs will be our counterpart for the building and structure,” Piñol said.
For the first year of the program, the DA eyes to establish 100 multiplier farms across the country, with 50 to be constructed in Luzon and 25 each in the Visayas and Mindanao.
Piñol pointed out that the income from the multiplier farms would be shared by the farmer-members of the cooperatives, while the offsprings of the parent herd will be distributed to a new multiplier farm.
“The good thing here is that we will be using embryo transfer so we can control what offspring do we want to have, may it be male or female,” he said. “The materials will be sourced from Argentina and Brazil.”
Piñol disclosed that local dairy farmers in Batangas are now asking for the construction of at least 10 multiplier farms in their area.
The DA chief said he will visit Brazil in December right after the World Trade Organization’s 11th Ministerial Conference in Argentina to personally check the Girulando heifers to be imported by the Philippines.
“So, hopefully, we could hit the target of additional 2.5 million heads at the end of the term of the President,” Piñol said.
Earlier, Brazil’s Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply Blairo Maggi said his government remains keen on selling Girolando cattle to the Philippines.
“Brazil is still interested in selling cattle to the Philippines. In fact, we recently sent back questionnaires to the Philippines and we are expecting that the Philippines will send a mission here to fine-tune remaining issues,” Maggi told foreign journalists in a news briefing in São Paulo, Brazil, on August 28.
Maggi said Brazil is also open to exporting other genetic materials, as well as other breeds of cattle, such as those for meat production.
“Brazil has a number of markets which are open for slaughter cattle and open for breeding, not just for [live] cows, but also genetic materials,” Maggi said. “Brazil has this interest, and each mission we carried out we present our portfolio to show our interests to send our livestock overseas.”
(Photos attached to this story showing Girolando cattle in the field and in the dairy sheds were downloaded from public websites.)
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