The Department of Agriculture (DA) has recognized outstanding provinces, cities and municipalities, provincial and municipal/city corn coordinators, provincial and municipal/city agriculturists, and agricultural extension workers (AEWs) during the Second Quality Corn Achievers Awards held recently.
The awarding ceremony was held in conjunction with the three-day 10th Philippine National Corn Congress (November 19 to 21) held at the Limketkai Center in Cagayan de Oro City.
Pangasinan, Isabela, Occidental Mindoro, Agusan del Norte, and Agusan del Sur were declared as outstanding provinces and received P3-million project grants for corn-related endeavors.
Other awardees include 25 outstanding cities/municipalities awarded P1 million in project grant (upon submission of project proposals); three provincial agriculturists; five provincial corn coordinators; 20 municipal/city agriculturists; 18 municipal/city corn coordinators and 100 AEWs.
Outstanding regional corn teams were, likewise, given recognition for their efforts to increase corn quality and production while a special award was given to Eulogio Cabiles of San Manuel, Tarlac for being the First GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) Certified Corn Farm in the country.
“Aside from volume, quality is among the top criteria in selecting the winning provinces. Counterpart investments of the local government units (LGUs) in pursuing corn-related projects in their respective areas are also taken into consideration,” Agriculture Assistant Secretary and National Corn Program Coordinator Edilberto de Luna said.
The awards encourage the winning LGUs to further improve the performance of the corn sector in their respective areas and the incentives received will help the awardees boost efficiency and quality of corn produced, he added.
In preparation for the upcoming Asean integration in 2015, Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala said the department will continue to prioritize post-harvest facilities and mechanization to make the corn industry in the country competitive in terms of cost.
“Manual labor is quite costly and post-harvest losses are high due to inadequate facilities such as dryers. If the yield increase by 0.3 metric tons per hectare, cost will dramatically decrease,” de Luna said.
Marvyn N. Benaning