BAGUIO CITY — The newly opened farm-to-market road in Tanudan town in upland Kalinga province has opened up opportunities for the local coffee industry as well, boosting the local industry’s chance of even reaching a more lucrative export market and improving the lot of the 4th-class municipality’s residents.
Done under the Department of Agriculture’s Philippine Rural Development Project (DA-PRDP), the PHP130-million road was meant to boost agro-tourism in Kalinga, especially the province’ coffee industry, said Danilo Daguio, Regional Technical Director of DA-Cordillera.
According to Daguio, some 3,425 hectares of coffee plantations, including other crops like corn, stand to benefit from the 13-kilometer farm-to-market road project, which stretches from Banneng to Gombowoy villages in Tanudan town, reputed to be the province’s biggest producer of coffee.
Coffee is Kalinga’s main product, which the Department of Trade and Industry and other government agencies see as having international potential, thus, the effort to strengthen it.
Daguio said the new road system would also benefit around 673 households with over 4,000 population in the villages of Lay-asan and Pangol in Tanudan town.
“The completed PRDP road project will surely improve the coffee production in Tanudan,” said Daguio.
Earlier, DA-CAR Regional Director Narciso Edillo disclosed that to strengthen the local coffee industry, the agency is set to rehabilitate aging coffee plantations and expand coffee production areas in Kalinga and the entire upland region of Cordillera.
Edillo said the rehabilitation plans would focus primarily on Kalinga province’s capital Tabuk City and Tanudan town — the priority areas to be covered by the program.
For so many years now, coffee bean producers in Kalinga have been gaining shares in the local, national, and even foreign markets — the reason some entrepreneurs from other sectors have been venturing into coffee production as well. (PNA)
