North Cotabato to export fruits to EU

COTABATO CITY — North Cotabato, Central Mindanao’s orchard capital, will soon export fruits to the European Union, a venture the agriculture sector said will improve the area’s economy and generate more jobs.

The Mindanao Cross, a weekly newspaper here of the Oblate congregation, reported the other day that big organizations of orchard farmers in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato’s capital, forged trade linkages with prominent importers in the EU last week.

The trade agreements were signed here in the presence of Ann Abejuela, agriculture attaché to Belgium and Luxembourg.

Kidapawan Mayor Rudolfo Gantuangco, whose office has been helping organize farmers in his jurisdiction for them to have access to international markets, said the marketing linkages between local producers and fruit importers in the EU will project the capability of the North Cotabato to export farm products to the United States as well.

"Most importantly, this venture will provide our farmers much bigger incomes," Gantuangco said.

Gantuangco told Mindanao Cross that local farmers will start exporting exotic fruits such as lanzones, rambutan, mangosteen and durian to Brussels by the last quarter of this year.

Farmers in Kidapawan City and North Cotabato started propagating exotic fruits in the late 1990s through the efforts of former governor Emmanuel Piñol.

Piñol and a group of selected farmers are presently touring Vietnam to study the possibility of replicating in the province the rubber industry there. — John Unson