In her bid to reduce the province’s poverty incidence through agriculture, Governor Corazon N. Malanyaon is considering engaging in massive corn production following a proposal from a private investor seeking farmlands to be planted with the “promising” crop.

Vicente T. Lao, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Maharlika Agro-Marine Ventures Corporation, a world-class Filipino poultry company, expressed to the Governor his intention to locate at least 5,000 hectares of land in the province for corn production.

Mr. Lao explains that corn is a critical commodity with “a vast potential to fix the country’s concern on food security,” considering that the market prices of all other commodities depend on corn’s production cost.

“The only way to bring down the cost of our chicken, pork, beef, fish, milk, and egg is to bring down the price of corn because corn is 60 percent the component of the feeds. And that feed is 80 percent the component of the chicken or the hog. So, unless you bring down the price of corn, you will never be able to compete,” he said, emphasizing that “the only way to be competitive is to plant our own corn.”

Yellow corn is an essential ingredient in hogs, poultry, and fish feeds. It is preferred as animal feed because of its high carotene content.

𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝘀

Based on the proposal, the company will lease farmlands, preferably flat and contiguous, which will be identified by the provincial government. The company will provide the machinery, seedlings, and other farm inputs.

It will also put up a feed mill to process the corn into feeds. “Once you have the feeds, you can grow everything,” said Mr. Lao, adding that “without corn, we cannot produce cheap feeds.”

While the company’s proposed rental fee is pegged at P5,000 per hectare per year, a relatively low price, the company assured that it will provide alternative means of livelihood for the farmers that will encourage them to become more enterprising.

“Rather than become dependent on the rental alone, we make businessmen out of them,” said Mr. Lao.

The participating farmers will engage in chicken production through a contract growing scheme. The company will provide the chicks and feeds and may even give some investment for the coop or enclosure to house them. Farmers are only required to provide the labor cost to raise and reproduce the chicken and build the house for the poultry livestock.

In return, the company, which produces a variety of poultry products, assures to buy the chicken from the farmers.

“Chicken growing will be their (farmers) main livelihood. We will not be creating farmers who will just rent out their space. We are creating small farmer entrepreneurs,” Mr. Lao reiterated, noting that “we could not afford the very high rental for planting corn because it is a cheap commodity. He stressed that high production costs will create a domino effect on the prices of other commodities.

“We will never have food security in this country if we will not fix our corn industry,” Mr. Lao stressed.

𝗥𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘆, 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝘆

Governor Corazon Malanyaon considers the proposal an opportunity to enable her administration to reduce the province’s poverty incidence.

Davao Oriental is taking off from a poverty incidence rate of 32.7% (2021), the second highest among the 5 provinces in the Davao Region.

Aiming to reduce poverty and help the province’s economic recovery, the Governor ordered the Provincial Agriculture Office led by Dr. Edito Sumile to study the proposal’s feasibility.

She emphasized that while her administration is keen on finding opportunities and investment potentials to boost the economy, she wants whatever the province engages in must be sustainable and impact every household and every family.

“If there are 150 thousand families below the poverty threshold, we could target making a dent of at least 50 percent of these poor families to improve their financial conditions. Yan lang ang mission ko sa buhay in coming back as Governor (That is the only mission I have in coming back as Governor),” she said.

She added that the province will adopt a market-driven approach in selecting and producing major crops and livestock. “We shall only produce what the market can absorb,” she said.  

On top of these, the Governor stressed educating and capacitating farmers to be entrepreneurs, thus, the need to revive the Rural Entrepreneurship Advocacy for Change (REACh) Program, which was institutionalized in her previous administration. By Karen Lou Deloso | Photos by Eden Jhan Licayan