THE Provincial Government of Negros Occidental has allocated an additional P40 million to boost farm mechanization in the province, a Capitol official said.
Provincial Agriculturist Japhet Masculino, who spoke at the Commodity Investment Forum at the Provincial Capitol’s Social Hall in Bacolod City on Thursday, March 7, said using the additional fund they are tapping the Department of Agriculture (DA) for a possible counter parting scheme.
Masculino said they will personally propose it to Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, who is expected to arrive in Sagay City on Friday, March 8, with President Rodrigo Duterte for the distribution of land titles to the agrarian reform beneficiaries.
“Under the proposed scheme, the province will have a counterpart of 20 percent. If we have P40 million, the remaining 80 percent or P160 million will come from the DA’s Rice Enhancement Program,” he added.
The provincial government has been pushing for farm mechanization mainly to help farmers improve productivity and profitability by reducing production costs.
In 2018, it allocated P25 million for purchase of farm machineries. However, these can only cover “minimal” rice production areas.
Masculino said they target to fully mechanize the entire rice production areas of the province in three years.
Once the proposal is realized, the P200 million counterpart fund of the province and the DA can purchase at least 30 sets of machineries including tractors, harvesters and transplanters, among others.
All in all, the province may have 30 service providers that can cover about a total of 12,000 hectares, or 400 hectares for each service provider.
“With these additional machineries, we can already fully mechanize the entire Bago River Irrigation System area,” Masculino said, adding that the province then only needs few more machineries to cover other production areas.
Farm mechanization is one of the measures of the province to allay possible adverse effects of the newly-signed Rice Tariffication Law.
The Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (Opa) earlier expressed apprehension that the measure may negatively impact local rice farmers as there will “influx” of imported and cheaper commodity.
“Though we are facing huge challenge with the tariffication, we can surpass it given the support mainly of the government,” Masculino said.
Meanwhile, about 130 farmers and other grains industry stakeholders in the province attended the forum.
It was organized by the provincial government through OPA, Provincial Veterinary Office (PVO) and Provincial Economic Development and Incentive, among other departments.
The forum is mainly aimed at providing local farmers the opportunities in terms of crops which they can diversify with an assurance that the province, local government units, and credit agencies will help.
“We hope to cover the entire value chain,” he added. (EPN)