Army camps in Bukidnon, Nueva Ecija to grow coffee, bamboo

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Some 4,000 hectares of land in two military camps in Bukidnon and Nueva Ecija will be converted into coffee and bamboo plantations under the government’s National Greening Program (NGP), environment officials said Tuesday.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources will provide P55 million to the Department of National Defense for the project, which is part of the agreement it has signed with three other government agencies to hasten the implementation of the NGP.

The other agencies are the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Agrarian Reform and the Department of the Interior and Local Government,  which comprise the National Convergence Initiative, a poverty-reduction strategy for countryside development.

“This signing is an excellent affirmation of NGP’s centrality to the core mandates of every key national agency like the DND,” Environment Secretary Ramon Paje said in a news release.

Paje signed the agreement along with Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio De Los Reyes, Agriculture Undersecretary Emerson Palad, and Local Government Assistant Secretary Rolando Acosta in a ceremony at the DND Social Hall at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City on Monday.

The agreement, called “DA, DAR, DENR and DILG National Convergence Initiative in Partnership with DND,” formalizes the inclusion of the DND in the implementation of the Aquino government’s flagship reforestation program.

NGP seeks to grow 1.5 billion trees in 1.5 million hectares nationwide by 2016. It aims to contribute to poverty reduction, food security, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Under the agreement, the DENR will provide a seed fund of P5 million to support the coffee plantation pilot project covering 200 hectares in Camp Kibaritan in Bukidnon province.  The DENR will also support the remaining 800 hectares that will comprise the 1,000-hectare coffee plantation.

The environment department will also release P50 million to the DND to finance the 3,000-hectare bamboo plantation project at Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija.

The DENR will provide necessary technical assistance to ensure the success of the project, conduct regular monitoring and evaluation, and jointly identify with the DND suitable areas for development under the NGP, including vulnerable and hazard-prone areas within military reservations.

For its part, the DND will establish in selected military reservations nurseries and plantation sites for the production of quality food crops, seedlings and planting of native tree species.

For military reservations that can be developed into agricultural land, the agriculture department shall be the lead agency to boost farmers’ income and reduce poverty in the rural sector.

On the other hand, the DAR shall be the lead agency in providing central direction and coordination to the national agrarian reform program.