Leyte gov't links with agri firm on modern farming

ALANGALANG, Leyte, Nov. 4 (PNA) -- The provincial government of Leyte has welcomed a new partner in its continued effort to increase resilience of farming communities, three years after supertyphoon Yolanda struck.

The local government has forged partnership with the Chen Yi Agriventures, led by its owners, Rachel Renucci-Tan and French industrialist Patrick Renucci.

The group aligned with Leyte Governor Leopoldo Dominico Petilla's "More Income in the Countryside" program for rice production.

According to Renucci-Tan, the partnership aims to help increase farmers productivity and economic resilience and alleviate poverty amongst farmers and their family.

The Renucci partnership, according to her, is the first to offer an end-end mechanized rice farming process in the Visayas region.

"When we say end to end mechanized farming, it involves all steps -- land preparation to planting, cultivation, to harvesting, drying, storage, milling, bagging, and distribution," said Renucci-Tan.

During an ongoing harvesting activity in Leyte town, it has initially engaged with partner-farmers in deploying and operating combined harvester-treshers in the towns of Alang-alang, Sta.Fe, San Miguel, and Palo.

It has also acquired laser graders to even the lands, rotary tillers, disc plows, tractors, trailers and straw collection machines for the use of farmer-partners.

Renucci-Tan said that payment will be made through lease, where the company will get the 10 percent of their harvest. The company will buy the entire produce after getting their payment.

This is lower by half than the usual loan farmers get, which is 20 percent. They also buy the extra produce based on the prevailing market price.

The Renucci partnership and MIC rice program will collaborate in the provision of training for farmers in adopting optimal planting techniques, in order to increase the yield and therefore income.

Petilla is pleased with the partnership, the provincial government role in this program he said is to provide assistance to private companies achieve their goal in introducing new and technical ways in farming.

“The partnership’s target is to increase the income of farming households for up to five times from an average of PHP19,000 per hectare to PHP133,000 per hectare,” Petilla explained.

Petilla further informed that with the use of the machine, harvest becomes easier and with less cost, where a total of three to four hectares of land are processed compared to a hectare with the manual harvesting.

Inputs-in-kind, it was learned, will be provided to farmers in the form of high-yielding seed varieties, fertilizers, and pesticides.

To further increase productivity and income to farmers, the partnership brings in the infrastructure that would reduce post-harvest losses. It will eventually launch a modern typhoon rice processing center in Alangalang, which will produce high quality rice for Visayas region.

Renucci-Tan said that they chose Leyte to be recipient of the partnership because they wanted to put back the province to its glory to being the 5th rice producing province in the country before Yolanda struck. (PNA)

JMC/SQM/LIZBETH ANN A. ABELLA/EGR