AGRICULTURE Secretary Emmanuel Piñol is amenable to the proposed “counterparting” scheme of the Provincial Government of Negros Occidental for the latter's farm mechanization program, the top official of the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPA) said.
Provincial Agriculturist Japhet Masculino, who met Piñol during the distribution of land titles in Sagay City on Friday, March 8, said the agriculture chief has positive response to the proposal.
Masculino earlier said that the Provincial Government has allocated an additional P40 million to boost its farm mechanization measure.
Under the proposed scheme, the province will have a counterpart of 20 percent. So if the province spends P40 million, P160 million will come from the Department of Agriculture (DA), for a P200 million program.
The agency will utilize its Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund provided under the newly implemented rice tariffication law.
“We have yet to formally put the proposal in writing. We will also set another meeting with the secretary for the sharing arrangements,” he said, adding that OPA will work it out as soon as possible.
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.
OPA targets 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 about12,000 hectares, or 400 hectares for each service provider.
Masculino earlier said that with these additional machineries, the province can already fully mechanize the entire Bago River Irrigation System area.
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 tariffication. (EPN)