Maguindanao MNLF to launch cavendish banana farm
AGRICULTURE • 23:48 PM Tue Sep 16, 2014
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By:
John Unson, The Mindanao Cross
Photo by John Unsoon
COTABATO
CITY (Sept. 16/NDBC) -- Members of the Moro National Liberation
Front will launch on Thursday a self-sustained 500-hectare Cavendish banana
farm in the MNLF’s main enclave in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao.
The
project is meant to generate livelihood needed to sustain the schooling of
children of former Moro rebels that comprise the MNLF-led Barangay Bago Inged
Multi-Purpose Cooperative.
Datumama
Guiaman, chairman of the MNLF cooperative, said while they do not have foreign
capitalists for their banana venture, there are traders abroad ready to buy
their harvests.
The
chairman of the MNLF’s largest and most politically active faction, former
Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, will lead the symbolic launching of the
banana farm project in Barangay Bago Inged in
northwest of Datu Odin Sinsuat.
Sema
said unlike most of the foreign-assisted Cavendish banana plantations that
mushroomed in Maguindanao in the past two years, the MNLF’s cooperative farm is
a self-sustained project, to be funded out of earnings by local farmers.
Barangay
Bago Inged is host to the MNLF’s largest enclave in Maguindanao, the Camp
Ebrahim, now a government-recognized peace zone,” where former Moro rebels
thrive as farmers.
Sema
said the cooperative aims to develop into a Cavendish banana plantation at least
500 hectares of idle lands in the surroundings of Camp Ebrahim.
Guiaman
said their cooperative banana project shall also serve as a model farm for MNLF
members in other Maguindanao towns.
The
MNLF signed a peace pact with government on September 2, 1996, paving the way
for the integration of more than 6,000 guerillas into the Armed Forces and the
Philippine National Police.
Most
of the MNLF members that failed to qualify for integration into the military
and the police are now peacefully tilling agricultural lands in their enclaves.
(NDBC)