Duterte: Mindanao is the country’s future food basket

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte delivers his speech at the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) campaign rally at the Mayor Vitaliano D. Agan Coliseum in Zamboanga City on March 3, 2019. VALERIE ESCALERA/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO

ZAMBOANGA CITY – President Rodrigo Duterte sees Mindanao as the future food basket of the country, a source of grains to supply the entire country.

“Mindanao is the most productive land in the entire Philippines, and the best situated because there is no typhoon in Mindanao so that you can plant anything and it can feed the entire nation,” Duterte said in his speech before some 2,000 remaining crowd on late Sunday night until Monday dawn.

“Pag wala ang Mindanao, we will be forever importing rice. Do not believe in that s***, that we can be rice-sufficient. Visayas, Luzon, the visit of the typhoons there comes with regularity. Nasisira lahat (Everything is destroyed),” Duterte said.

“It is where the weather is relatively consistent and should still have the moisture, rain, it’s Mindanao,” the President added trying to make a point while local political aspirants who pledged loyalty to the PDP Laban were waiting for his endorsement.

Duterte said he wanted to see the children and their grandchildren have a better future and food supply to last for generations.

“Ngayon pwede natin itanim to feed the Philippines. It’s our duty to see to it that the supply of food would last until the next generation at sila naman maghanap ng paraan to feed the next Filipino who would come after them,” he said.

In Basilan, Duterte talked about the oil potential in Liguasan Marsh. “Sa Cotabato, yung Liguasan Marsh, puro oil daw yan dyan.”

He also looked at Basilan to convert land reform, “may land reform na ba dito? Kasi kung wala, ila-land reform ko ito, maniwala kayo.”

“Each man must always be given a place under the sun,” he said. /lzb