SAN MATEO, Isabela—In his visit to this town last week, Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala initiated what many described as a pitch in scheme in order to raise funds to pave farm-to-market roads in this agricultural town, which he declared as “the mung-bean capital of the Philippines.”
Spearheading his department’s counterpart share of P3.3 million for San Mateo’s 33 villages, or an equivalent of P100,000 for each barangay, Alcala led the bandwagon for other local officials to follow.
In behalf of their respective offices, Isabela Gov. Faustino Dy III, Isabela Third District Rep. Napoleon Dy, San Mateo Mayor Crispina Agcaoili and the town’s barangay councils also committed P3.3 million each to come up with a total of P16.5 million for the town’s farm- road network.
Former three-term mayor and now San Mateo Vice Mayor Roberto Agcaoili said during his term as town chief, he instituted the practice in order to make raising of funds a cooperative effort.
“We don’t just solicit funds for our town projects, we give our share to serve as equity to assure our benefactors that every project shall be sustained by our constituents knowing they contributed to it,” said Agcaoili.
This most-awarded town of Isabela celebrated last week the three-day third Balatong Festival from (May 16 to 18) in honor to its equally-awarded mongo crop, better known as balatong among Ilocanos.
Next to rice, the protein-rich mung beans stays as a major cash for this town. For a number of reasons, the leguminous crop has been institutionalized here as a primary alternative to rice in terms of income generation and climatic adoptability.
After painstaking years of thorough research, what has been dubbed as “black gold” (because of its black pods), mongo has won the prestigious Galing Pook Award for the town a couple of summers ago.
Agcaoili, who himself bested 35 other municipal chief executives to become Isabela’s most outstanding mayor and recipient of the Presidential Lingkod Bayan Award, which prompted the League of Municipalities of the Philippines to present him double gold Punong Bayan Award of Excellence during his term, recalled that his municipality found no difficulty participating in the Galing Pook competition because the agricultural technology on mongo production has been in practice in his town one year after he took over as mayor in 2001.
“Six years ago, we were not conscious of any award. We were compelled to develop mongo as an alternate crop to rice because we wanted to sustain farm production even during dry months, when there is extreme scarcity of water in town. Whether there was competition or not, the practice was designed to arrest declining rice and corn production and to restore the fertility of the soil,” Agcaoili recalled.
With a prevailing farm gate price ranging from P52 to P60 per kilo, the town now has more than 7,400 hectares planted to mongo.
“With a number of mongo farmer cooperators in town, we are now producing registered and certified seed to meet the great demand for planting materials. Many towns in the country as far as Siniloan, Laguna, have indicated interest in replicating our lucrative mongo industry,” said San Mateo agricultural officer Emil Camba.
For this reason Alcala also promised to give each of the town’s 33 barangays a multipurpose (three-in-one) thresher that could process mongo, corn and rice.
