ILOILO CITY — Agriculture stakeholders from three Visayas regions presented to Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol their local food security plan during the Food Security Summit Visayas cluster held in this city Tuesday.
Piñol explained that the local food security plan “will be the basis for a bigger plan which we will call the National Food Security Act of 2010”.
“The National Food Security Act of 2020 will be a five-year program that will identify the things that need to be done in each and every locality so that each town will be able to contribute to food security,” he said during the press conference.
He added that the plan is significant amid the “uncertainty brought about by the climate change, growing population and other factors that may affect agriculture.”
Piñol said they will try to reach out to other local government units that have not yet submitted their plan. Of the 369 local government units in three regions of Visayas, only 231 have submitted their plans.
These included 106 from 133 cities and municipalities from Western Visayas; 64 of the 122 local government units from Central Visayas and 61 from 143 cities and municipalities from Eastern Visayas.
“I really ask them to contribute because it will be to the disadvantage of their people if they don’t. What we would like to produce here is the complete picture of the food requirements and the food production potentials of the whole country. Unless we are able to cover each and every town, we will not be able to come up with a complete picture of what we would like to achieve,” he said.
He said they will wait for the plans before the end of November this year.
In his keynote address, he also announced that the mayors who were present during the summit will have an incentive of one kilometer farm-to-market road to be given in 2020.
Most fortunate during the summit was the municipality of Tabontabon in Leyte, whose mayor presented to the secretary the need of his constituents.
Tabontabon is a fifth class municipality and the smallest town of Leyte having a total land area of 2,462 hectares.
Mayor Rustico Balderian said that 90 percent of their people are into farming. While they are rice sufficient, they still have to recover from the damages caused by typhoon Yolanda to their coconut industry.
However they lack irrigation and only 1,000 hectares of their farms are irrigated.
Piñol, during the summit, committed a PHP15-million loan capitalization that will be given to their qualified farmers association, two solar-powered irrigation, four mini-tractor and two harvester.
“I was flabbergasted and of course I was very, very happy. It was beyond my expectation that the good secretary would give such assistance to our impoverished municipality,” he said.
He added the support will “really make a big impact to their community.”
He added the statement of Piñol to make their town as a model is a “very sweet and easy challenge because there is the support of the government.”
“The lives of the people of Tabontabon will no longer be covered. We will uncover the lives of your people. Today, we will open up a new horizon for your town,” Piñol said. Tabon means cover. (Perla Lena/PNA)
