San Joaquin village selected for DA coco growing project
The village of Quia-Anan in San Joaquin, Iloilo is one of the 10 areas in the country selected by the Department of Agriculture for its sustainable livelihood project for coconut growing communities dubbed “Kasaganaan sa Niyugan ay Kaunlaran ng Bayan” or KAANIB.
The nine others are in Happy Valley, Roxas, Oriental Mindoro; Brgy. San Francisco, Tagkawayan, Quezon; and Brgy. San Rafael, Catilla, Sorsogon in Luzon; Brgy. Campanga, Barili, Cebu and Brgy. Burabod, Biliran, Biliran in Visayas; Brgy. Upper Ulip, Monkayo, Compostela Valley; Brgy. San Roque, Panaon, Misamis Oriental; Brgy. Palian, Tupi, South Cotabato; and Limpapa in Zamboanga City in Mindanao.
The DA will be the executing agency of the project with the Philippine Coconut Authority as the implementing agency.
Assistant Secretary for Field Operations Edilberto de Luna said the project was crafted to uplift the plight of the coconut farm households, enhance food security in the coconut growing communities, and to develop good practices to increase farmers’ incomes, generate employment at the community level, and to enhance support systems for sustainability.
One of the banner programs of the Department, KAANIB aims to adopt income-generating interventions to reduce poverty, ensure the availability of food and increase farmers’ incomes to ascertain sustainable livelihood for farming communities.
Among the strategies to be employed are: 1) develop the community-based organization’s (CBO) capacity as village-level entrepreneurs and not mere suppliers of raw materials; 2) transfer village-level processing technologies to the communities that will empower resource-poor farmers and the disadvantage women in the coconut-growing communities; and 3) provide technical support and marketing assistance to those implementing the income-generating interventions.
De Luna said to ensure sustainability of income-generating livelihoods, “nothing will be free except training and capacity building to be provided by the project.” Skills training and capacity building of the CBO will include processing and production technologies to enhance competence with assistance from the Agricultural Training Institute and the PCA Technical Support Group.
He said the inputs to be used for each of the component shall be repaid by the CBO participants through the microcredit system. A microcredit system with a revolving fund will be established and managed by CBO officers to support the income-generating activities for the production of high-value crops and community managed seedling nurseries.
The project shall be supported by a market survey to identify marketable products and new product opportunities, and even link the CBO with interested private sectors and to the Department of Trade and Industy to help the CBO in product packaging and export marketing.
“Each participant of the project is required to plant at least 15 seedlings per year for a period of three years to replace aging coconut palms to conserve and propagate high-value or high-yielding varieties in the community,” De Luna said.*
