Corn board convened

Presidential Adviser on Job Creation in Agriculture Luis Lorenzo Jr. recently convened business leaders and farming groups as founding members of the first Corn Board in the country.

The board, patterned after the recently organized Philippine Coffee Board, aims to provide an institutional mechanism to tackle the problems facing the country’s corn producer.

Lorenzo cited the importance of corn to national economy and the contribution the board can provide the industry.

He urged the development-banking sector particularly Landbank and DBP to fasttrack the implementation of their logistic and corn competitiveness program amounting to almost P6 billion and P1 billion, respectively.

Lorenzo explained that "corn covers 20 percent of the country’s arable lands and employs more than 20 percent of the agricultural labor force and preparing the corn sector to the desired efficiency is a very complicated task".

The "board is leading a corn competitiveness program to help farmers face the competition posed by cheap US corn and Indian wheat", he added.

The corn competitiveness program includes the provision of grain centers for post harvest and storage, bulk handling facilities and grains terminal, production support and sound agricultural policy that encourages private investments.

Corn Board founding member Tetchie Capellan said the board is "aggressively collaborating with farmers and promoting the program to prospective borrowers" to increase the delivery of credit to the producers and small size corn enterprises. She called on the members of the board to have "measurable goals so as to help reduce the cost of doing business, and to focus on increasing the farmers’ income".

Capellan added that the challenge to the board is on how a "change in corn production and trade practices" can be done to help Mindanao corn producers compete with US corn".

The Corn Board was established following the continuous decline of corn farms and sharp price fluctuations of this commodity. From a total of 2.6 million hectares in 1995, area harvested went down to 2.5 million hectares in 2000.