NTA opens P165-M center to help tobacco farmers

MANILA, Philippines - The National Tobacco Administration (NTA) has opened a P165-million food processing and trading center in Ilocos Sur as part of its alternative income program for tobacco farmers.

 The 1.5-hectare facility, called the NTA Agri-Pinoy Tobacco Farmers Food Processing and Trading Center, is strategically located along the national highway of Brgy. Nanguneg East in Narvacan town.

 The food processing center comprises a slaughterhouse with a capacity of 200 heads daily and a chicken dressing plant which has a capacity of 200 heads per hour.

To be processed in the plant are well-known meat products such as bagnet, longganisa, bacon, ham, tapa and tocino, which would be  directly sold in major trading outlets (bagsakan centers), food terminal, government offices, and hospitals and supermarkets.

 The Department of Agriculture’s Agribusiness Marketing Assistance Service would assist the NTA in the distribution of processed meats in Ilocos and Metro Manila.

 NTA administrator Edgardo Zaragoza said that aside from the P165-million allotted for the construction of the food processing facility, another P35 million would be allotted as working capital.

The facility is constructed as a component of NTA’s Integrated Farming and Other Income Generating Activities Project, an intervention program that seeks to provide tobacco farmers with additional sources of income outside their regular trade.

“The mandate of the NTA really is to improve the quality of lives of tobacco farmers, tobacco farmers so they will not be dependent on their crop alone,” said NTA planning manager Rex Teoxon.

“We have been training them in integrated farming systems which included livestock and poultry raising. To increase their earnings, they need to add value to their products hence the need for the food processing center,” he added.

Tobacco is harvested only once a year.

The processing center, which would be initially be run by the NTA, would source hogs from farmers in Ilocos Sur, Abra, and the Cordillera Administrative Region.

Zaragoza  said 7, 693 tobacco farmers in the region have been trained in backyard hog and poultry raising since June and have been grouped into 125 farm clusters.

Teoxon said the food processing facility is expected to begin processing of hogs in the second week of the month while it would begin to process poultry in the first quarter of 2014.

NTA would source hog and chicken breeder stocks from Universal Robina Corp. because of “good quality of parent stocks and competitive prices.”