Agriculture.ph Blog

Angara sponsors bill to develop idle farm lands, generate harvest

THE government can immediately address rural poverty by putting to good use arable lands in the provinces, Sen. Edgardo Angara suggested over the weekend.

Enlisting congressional support for the plan, Angara introduced Senate Bill 883, entitled Rural Employment Generation Act of 2007, which seeks to develop idle and underutilized agricultural lands to generate, he said, high-quality produce and employment for the rural population.

A former secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Angara pointed out that at least 5 million Filipinos in the rural sector are either unemployed or underemployed largely due to “the underutilization of agricultural lands in the country. At the same time, we are missing the opportunity of harvest.”

He proposed that the DA, as lead agency to implement this Act through the Rural Employment Generation Program, could convert a million hectares of unused lands into farms of hybrid corn, cassava and high-value commercial crops (HVCCs) in a period of two years.

“The program will integrate existing crop areas with idle prime lands into clusters of mechanized and irrigated farms, adopt modern crop production technologies, enhance farmers’ access to credit for their purchases and capital, provide training for farmers on innovations in postharvest mechanization and processing, and promote local capacity-building,” he said.

The senator added that a quality standard system will also be implemented on feed grain, vegetables, fibers, fruits and industrial crops to ensure their quality for consumption as well as better and competitive prices in the domestic market.

Noting that local farm produce has recently taken a slump in the market due to imported goods from neighboring Asian countries, Angara asserted that “this bill will boost our capability to produce high-quality crops.”

Under Angara’s bill, a joint committee between the government and the private sector will be created to facilitate both their active participation in the program, specifically in managing implementation of the program and identifying farmer-beneficiaries, credit channels and markets and service providers.

The bill will, likewise, provide for an Agricultural Development Fund of P5.55 billion for the first year and P4.1 billion for the second year of the program, to be taken from the budget of the DA. The program is then expected to generate rural employment valued at P10.35 billion and private-sector investments worth P10.6 billion.

“Not only are we maximizing the richness of our resources for healthy consumption; we are also creating jobs for millions of Filipinos in the provinces to keep them self-subsisting so they can build better lives. The core objective of this bill is to drastically reduce rural poverty,” he said.

Written by Butch Fernandez

Source: Business Mirror