Tobacco agency pushes chicken raising project

The National Tobacco Administration (NTA) has beefed up its chicken raising project as it anticipates a shortage of the commodity during the coming Christmas season.

NTA Administrator Carlitos Encarnacion said his agency entered recently into a memorandum of agreement witth tobacco farmers’ cooperatives in Ilocos Sur and Ilocos Norte whose members will go into extensive chicken production.

The project is part of NTA’s mandate after the agency took on a new task as manager-operator of the Multine Food Processing Plant (MFPP) owned by the Ilocos Sur provincial government.

Ilocos Sur Governor Luis "Chavit" Singson had turned over the management of the plant to NTA which mobilized tobacco farmers as the suppliers of raw materials — hogs, chicken, vegetables, fruits — that Multine makes available to the public as fresh food supplies or processes them into frozen food products. The fruits are turned into dried chips.

Encarnacion said the tie-up with Multine which is dubbed PGMA-Multiline project would greatly boost the income of tobacco farmers and is in line with Goals 1 and 2 of President Arroyo’s development agenda.

The agreement for the chicken raising project was signed by leaders of Bankagan Multipurpose Cooperative (Narvacan, Ilocos Sur), Aguing MPC (Sinait, Ilocios Sur) and Balunabid MPC (Ilocos Norte.

Signing for Bankagan MPC was Carlos Cachola who is also the president of Philippine Association of Tobacco-Based Cooperatives while Pepito Rocutan, Diosdado Salgado, Gerardo Mangoma and Jojo Yoro signed for the other cooperatives.

Under the agreement, NTA provides production assistance that includes inputs, broilers, and veterinary supplies and technical assistance including veterinary services.

The NTA-managed MFPP would later procure the cooperatives’ chicken produce and pay the farmers growers’ fees.