LEGAZPI CITY — The Department of Agriculture’s (DA) Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) has granted a PHP1.32-million funding for live native chicken production that would provide livelihood to women of Cagang village in Barcelona town in Sorsogon, who were affected by Typhoon Nona.
DA spokesperson Emily Bordado, in a phone interview Thursday, said the project targets to produce 383 native chickens per module, or a total of 13,405 heads per year.
“The live native chicken production project that will be produced by the breeding stock for the first to third cycle will be marketed at PHP120 per kg. Native chickens are easy to rear, are adapted to local conditions, are prolific breeders, and command a good price in the market,” she said.
Bordado said the Rural Improvement Club (RIC), which used to engage in handicraft-making projects before the onslaught of “Nona” in December 2015, will pursue the native chicken production project.
The typhoon devastated their main source of raw materials and heavily affected the livelihood of the locals.
The RIC Cagang serves as the owner and manager of the Native Chicken Production and Marketing enterprise.
The RIC projected a net income of PHP150,000 per cycle, which is equivalent to 11 percent return of investment per cycle for the association, or a 15-percent increase in farmers’ income per cycle.
RIC Cagang chairperson Arlene Haz said she is grateful for the micro-enterprise sub-project from PRDP.
“Our husbands used to wake up late, now they wake up early to help us in tending our native chicken,” she said in Filipino.
Haz said the PRDP empowered the RIC to seek more income-generating opportunities for rural women in Barangay Cagang.
She said she barely earned PHP200 to PHP250 daily in handicraft-making but now gains an additional PHP500 with the native chicken production project.
“First, we learned how to make a proposal — the process, how to manage an organization, how to grow our business, and how to make a living on our own,” she added.
PRDP is a six-year World Bank-assisted development project designed to establish a modern, inclusive, value chain-oriented and climate-resilient agri-fishery sector in the countryside.
Native chicken production and marketing is one of the 10 micro-enterprise sub-projects approved by PRDP for calamity-stricken areas in Sorsogon under its enterprise development (I-REAP) component.
Under the project, RIC also received transport cages or crates, egg trays, units of digital weighing scale and artificial incubator. (Connie Calipay/PNA)
