Mango contract growing project to benefit former rail dwellers

A mango ‘contract growing’ project to benefit some 1,300 families displaced by the Northrail project and resettled in Valenzuela City was launched Friday, according to Valenzuela City Mayor Sherwin Gatchalian.

Gatchalian said the City Livelihood Development Council, which he chairs, distributed some 10,000 seedlings of the Guimaras carabao mango variety to new settler-members of the Kapisanan ng mga Samahan sa Riles Valenzuela (Kasarival) in Barangay Bignay.

Tita Garcia, head of the Urban Agricultural Program of the Department of Agriculture (DA), said mango scions resdu for grafting to the four-month-old rootstocks will be provided the new "contract growers," including budding knives and tapes. The seedlings are about four months old and have grown to about four or five feet.

Ellen Reyes, of the Urban Poor Affairs Office (UPAO), said 50 to 100 seedlings of the sweet mango will be given to each beneficiary-family. The scions will then be grafted to the seedlings and grown in their respective lots for four more months before the DA will buy them back for P30 per seedling.

Garcia said that of the amount, P25 will go to the member-family while P5 goes to Kasarival for the purchase of more rootstocks to be grafted and grown for re-distribution.

Garcia added that the beneficiaries can also sell the grafted mango trees to interested private firms at prevailing prices of P50 to P60 per seedling, giving the growers the opportunity to earn more.

Some 100 Kasarival homeowners earlier trained on mango grafting will be teaching the propagation technique to other members of the community in an "echo training program."

Gatchalian said the project, initiated by the multi-sectoral livelihood council of the city in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture (DA), is part of President Arroyo’s Serbisyo Muna program.

He said it was a special project of the DA for depressed areas in Metro Manila.