Department of Agriculture taps San Miguel for agri ventures

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Agriculture (DA) will forge a partnership with San Miguel Food Corp. (SMFC) on exploring opportunities to improve the agriculture industry and provide food security to Filipinos.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala said the Aquino administration is bent on building partnerships with private companies in solving the problem of food security in the country.

To start off such a partnership, Alcala said the DA is collaborating with SMFC to export livestock products as there is now a good market for sheep export in Indonesia.

SMFC has been exporting yakitori or grilled chicken to Japan. DA data showed that the country has exported a total of six million kilograms of chicken yakitori in 2009 alone.

Alcala urged SMFC to explore further export opportunities, this time in the prawn industry, citing the fact that Japan has a big demand for prawns.

“The Japanese Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister told me in our discussion that they never banned the Philippines in exporting prawns to them. It just happened that the economy went down because of the huge production of prawns in the country,” Alcala said.

Alcala said he was able to convince a few exporters and buyers, including South Korea and Singapore, to buy livestock and poultry products from the country, adding that the department is now working double time to obtain necessary permits and authorization.

“Our job is to look for available opportunities in the international market and match the right companies to take care of the exportation,” Alcala said.

Aside from possible exports, Alcala said SMFC could be a great help in supplying feeds to the mariculture project of the government — a continuously growing industry which now supplies around 50 percent of the fish produce in the country.

For his part, SMFC president Francisco Alejo gave his assurance that the company would continue to work with DA, not just in sustaining existing programs but in creating more strategic and innovative ways of further developing and advancing the country’s agricultural sector.

“We really want to drive the administration’s key strategy of advancing the country’s growth to public-private sector partnership and we want to deliver results,” Alejo said.