Leyte eyed as salad bowl of Visayas
Manila—A mountain range in Leyte would soon become the salad bowl of the Visayas.
The Department of Agriculture said it would develop a 20,000-hectare area in the Tongonan mountain range, which straddles Ormoc City and Kananga town, into a major grower of semi-temperate vegetables and high value crops.
The five-year project is a partnership with the PNOC-Energy Development Corp. Both the DA and the EDC have pledged P92 million to develop suitable areas surrounding EDC’s Leyte Geothermal Production Field to provide livelihood for 5,600 farmers.
The LGPF is the country’s largest producer of geothermal energy, producing than 700 megawatts (MW). The area covers a total of 107,625 hectares along the Tongonan mountain range.
At present, subsistence farmers around LGPF plant assorted vegetables and fruits like cabbage, green onion, tomato, eggplant, raddish, chayote, cucumber (pipino), and pineapple. About five tons are harvested weekly and sold at public markets in Ormoc City and Kananga.
Under the five-year project, farmers will be encouraged to plant other fruit crops like durian, rambutan and jackfruit, including coffee and abaca.
Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said the DA, through the DA Region 8 office and National Agribusiness Corporation (NABCOR), will assist farmers in the land preparation, cultivation, harvesting, processing, and marketing of vegetables and other high value commercial crops.
Alcala said he hopes that the project would encourage farmers to be entrepreneurial.
“In this partnership, it is important to each of us that we will help not only in production. We will also help in the processing and marketing. It is important to have economies of scale in marketing. We won’t be able to get a good price without it,” Alcala said.
The project is expected to benefit about 3,000 subsistence farm-families in seven villages in Kananga (Rizal, Hiluctogan, Montebello, Aguiting, Lim-ao, San Ignacio, and Tongonan) and nine villages in Ormoc City (Milagro, Nueva Vista, Cabaon-an, Danao, Gaas, Liberty, Tongonan, Mahayahay, and Dolores).
Of the P92-million initial funding, the DA-NABCOR will share P29 million to build a consolidation center and pilot packinghouse, and provide marketing support, said NABCOR president and CEO Honesto Baniqued, Jr. Another P13 million is earmarked for research and development.
“We at the DA-NABCOR aim to help transform the Ormoc-Kananga range into a major vegetable growing area in Eastern Visayas, which can later diversify into producing other high value horticultural crops such as cutflowers and fruits,” he said.
For its part, PNOC-EDC will provide a total of P50 million to finance farming activities, at P10 million each year from 2012 to 2016. /INQUIRER
