Masbate mayor says YES to Food Production

Business Mirror, Tuesday, 14 April 2009 22:07

Written by Danny O. Calleja / Correspondent 

MASBATE CITY—This city, the provincial capital of Masbate, is spearheading the government’s hunger-mitigation program (HMP) through aggressive agriculture productivity initiatives in an effort to improve the province’s economic standing as poorest in Bicol.

The island province is one of the biggest cattle producers in the country, rich in mineral resources such as gold, silver and copper, gifted with vast fishing grounds and a large producer of copra, rice and corn.

“Yet, the province was not able to free itself from the bondage of poverty characterized by hunger and malnutrition among children,” city mayor Socrates Tuason said on Tuesday.

However, he added that the agricultural intensification program his administration is now doing would help address the problem.

The program is designed to combat poverty, increase farm production and harness the resources in the upland and coastal barangays with the help of the national government that identified the province as one of the priority areas for the HMP, Tuason said.

It started eight years ago with P3.5 million provided by the city government in an intensified livestock dispersal project that benefited hundreds of families.

They were given livelihood opportunities to raise carabaos, swine, goats, horses and kabir chicken.

This year, the program was expanded and extended to rice production that even before the implementation of the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) seed and fertilizer subsidy program this year, the city government had already procured palay seeds and fertilizers that were distributed to farmers.

As a parallel scheme to the DA’s fertilizer subsidy program, the city government also provided P250 worth of discount coupons for complete fertilizer with a maximum of four coupons per hectare.

It also bought 300 bags of open-pollinated variety of white corn as planting material and 1,200 packets of Bio-N fertilizer to ensure the success of the corn production it had introduced. A farm tractor for the use of participating farmers was also acquired.

Vegetable seeds, garden tools and insect sprayers were also distributed to farmers in addition to what the DA has already been distributing under the Gulayan sa Masa Program.

For the fisheries and coastal resource management program, the city government allocated P3 million for establishment and maintenance of the 50-hectare Bugsayon marine sanctuary in barangay B. Titong and the 200-hectare Buntod Marine sanctuary.

This is to provide for protected breeding grounds and sanctuaries for fish and other marine resources to avert the decline of marine life due to illegal fishing, over-fishing and other destructive practices in the area.

The city also established the 300- hectare Pawa Mangrove Park which won for the city last year the regional Saringaya Award given by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) outstanding coastal resource management project and the Anvil Awards for Excellence for institutional and corporate programs.

The city also purchased and distributed to its fisherfolk 200 nonmotorized bancas and motor pumps. It also gives honorarium for its deputized fishing ground wardens, while a fish complex where refrigeration and storage facilities were set up at the reclaimed area where the integrated transport terminal is also located.

As a morale booster for the City Agricultural Office (CAG) that oversees the implementation of these programs on a round-the-clock basis, salaries of its agriculture extension workers and other field personnel were standardized at par with the national-paid agriculture personnel.

More agriculturists and farm technicians were also hired into the CAG making each participating barangay manned by a technician. Farm-to market roads in at least seven barangays have already been opened.

“The city is only eight years old but we are elated by the facts that ours is now one of the fast growing cities of the Bicol Region. We are not only the trading center of the island now but the breaker of a new ground towards the eradication of poverty and hunger for the entire province,” Tuason said.

“We are only piloting these undertakings, and we hope all the other 20 municipalities in the province would duplicate what we are doing in the city,” he said.

Embracing and promoting agriculture is the best solution that the province had in sight to uplift the living conditions of Masbateños that its cattle ranches and gold mines were not able to provide, Tuason said.

It is because cattle farms are owned by only a few rich families while the biggest beneficiaries of Masbate gold are only the giant mining companies mostly foreign-owned, the city mayor explained.

“Unless we look back to the basics and invest on agriculture for us to be able to be self-sufficient in food, Masbate will remain the poorest among the poor provinces of the country and its people lingering in hunger and malnutrition,” he added.