DA turns over P81-M rice, irrigation facilities

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Agriculture (DA) recently turned over  P81 million-worth of rice processing and irrigation facilities in the provinces of Surigao del Sur and Agusan del Sur.

Turned over to the Agusanon Para sa Bagong Pilipino, Inc. (Agus Pinoy) farmers’ cooperative in Purok Sunrise, municipality of Talacogon in Agusan del Sur is a P7.3- million rice mill and parboiling plant.

The facilities would service the rice processing requirements of 1, 500 farmers in the area.

Parboiling is the precooking of rice while still in the husk to improve the nutritional value of the grain.

Two farmers’ cooperatives in Barangay Calagdaan, Cantilan and Patong-patong, Madrid in Surigao del Sur, meanwhile, received a rice processing center (RPC) each with a combined value of P30.5 million.

The milling component of both RPCs is capable of  processing  1.2 million tons of palay (unhusked rice) per hour. Both also have drying and storage components.

The RPCs would serve the processing needs of 3,000 farmers belonging to the Pabantaba Association in the municipality of Madrid and the Tuyake Pederoid Domoyog Irrigators Association in Cantilan. The cooperatives work on a combined 5,000 hectares of rice lands

Turned over to Barangay Nueva Era in Bunawan, Agusan del Sur is a pump irrigation project valued at P43.3 million which would service 600 hectares of arable land in Nueva Era and adjoining barangays which are tilled by 1,000 farmers.

The grant of more rice processing and irrigation facilities to qualified farmers’ cooperatives is in line with the DA’s continued goal of attaining self-sufficiency in domestic rice supply by the end of the current administration’s term.

Attaining rice self-sufficiency could  be done specifically through increased mechanization which leads to lower post harvest losses and better quality of produce.

The government is instilling good agricultural practices among rice farmers to enable the rice industry to compete with other producers in Southeast Asia when the economies of member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are integrated into a single market economy by 2015.