DA-12 FMR eases farmers' lives in N. Cotabato village
AGRICULTURE • 19:16 PM Tue Mar 8, 2016
1,558
By:
Carl Ulysses Aguillon/contributor
Farm to market road in Barangay Camutan, Antipas, North Cotabato. (DA-12)
ANTIPAS, North Cotabato -From P100.00
per sack of rice or corn shipped through skylab ,
a local moniker for motorcycle, the transportation cost of farmers of Sitio
Matias, Barangay Camutan, North Cotabato was lowered to P60.00.
Municipal
Planning and Development Coordinator Noemi Reyes confirmed in an interview.
After the P8.3-M Farm-to-Market Road Project was implemented in 2014 by the
Department of Agriculture 12 through its Bottom-Up Budgeting Program in
partnership with the local government, it contributed a lot to increase the
income of farmers in the said sitio,” she said.The project has beenserving 100 farm families in Sitio Matias cultivating more than 700 hectares of
production area of commodities like rice, corn, coconut, rubber, and banana.
Jovic Teodoro,
a rice farmer, attested to that saying before the project was completed, they
could hardly pass through the muddy road and they paid a ton of money just to
deliver their products to the market.
At present,
Teodoro already bought his own motorcycle because he saved a lot from his
income after the road was rehabilitated and concreted.
Meanwhile,
Hernando Villarosa Jr., Punong Barangay of Camutan, also disclosed that aside
from Sitio Matias, some parts of the mountains of Arakan and Magpet also
benefit from the project since the road is also a gateway of products from the
said area.
I am very
thankful to the Department of Agriculture 12 for this project. We never thought
that the road will be rehabilitated and concreted,” he said.Aside from the
FMR project from BUB, Barangay Camutan also received from DA’s Agri Pinoy Rice
Program three multi-purpose drying pavement and two warehouses.