TO PROVIDE livelihood to farmers in Bohol, the Department of Agriculture (DA) will provide 6,000 cows for the development of the dairy industry by 2022.

The agency targets to bring 6,000 heads of Holstein cattle to Ubay, Bohol.

“The forefront of our move is to increase the dairy production in our country. It’s a huge industry that we have neglected in the past,” Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol said.

Only two percent of the total national dairy requirement is produced in the country, while 98.2 percent are imports.

“Next year, 2,000 heads will be provided to Ubay for Phase 1 until Phase 3,” he said.

The area for the project is located in the 3,000-hectare Ubay Stock Farm in Bohol.

Piñol announced on Saturday, March 2, that he had signed the documents to bid out the Ubay, Bohol Dairy Project through the ACDI Multipurpose Cooperative of retired military personnel and AfiMilk, an Israeli company which also spearheaded a 29,000-head dairy farm in Vietnam.

Compact dairy farms will also be put up in different provinces in the country, particularly in Bukidnon and Baguio, after the governments of Canada and the Czech Republic expressed interest in bringing their dairy production technology to the Philippines.

“They have announced their intention to collaborate with us to boost dairy production in the country,” he said.

Piñol said that in five years’ time, Bohol will become a major dairy production area with more farmers contributing to the nation’s dairy requirement.

“These cows will reproduce and with that many cattle, we hope it would cascade to small dairy farmer groups where village-level dairy production will be achieved,” he said.

With this, the DA is looking to make Bohol the dairy capital of the Philippines.

The Ubay Dairy Farm is planned to be a public-private partnership venture with the DA through the Bureau of Animal Industry and the National Dairy Authority, which is estimated to produce 21-million liters of milk every year, Piñol said in an earlier statement on his Facebook account. (JOB)