TABUK CITY, Kalinga – Gov. James Edduba underscored that the province will definitely benefit from the enhanced agriculture program of President and Agriculture Secretary Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ R. Marcos, Jr. because of its current status as the food basket of the Cordillera.
Edduba stated that with the recent pronouncements of President Marcos on the programs, projects and activities on agriculture, Kalinga will surely benefit from these because of its available vast tracks of agricultural lands that will greatly help in sustaining food sufficiency in the region amidst the emerging threats of global food shortage.
Tabuk City and some parts of Kalinga, are considered the rice granary of the Cordillera being the major producer of rice and other agricultural crops that sustained the region’s rice and food self-sufficiency over the past several decades.
With the President at the helm, the governor claimed that major programs, projects and activities on agriculture will surely be given the appropriate funding so that the long overdue modernization of the country’s agriculture sector will be realized.
The provincial chief executive pointed out that members of both chambers of Congress will surely grant the budget earmarked by the Chief Executive for the programs, projects and activities needed to prime the said sector as he will personally supervise the implementation of the said interventions being the concurrent Secretary of the agriculture department.
According to him, it is important for the government to consider the sufficiency of food on every Filipino family’s table that is why something must be done to further improve the production of agricultural crops that will provide the opportunity for stakeholders to be able to earn substantial income instead of relying on importation to stabilize the supply of food.
Edduba stipulated that with the expected substantial government support that will be infused to agriculture by the government, this will convince more people to make their idle lands productive to increase the current production supplying the market.
He suggested that the government should also expand existing irrigation projects to irrigate more idle agricultural lands in the countryside to make them productive as part of the agriculture value chain that will be beneficial to concerned stakeholders.
He added that the enormous support that the government will infuse on agriculture will help in preventing the rapid conversion of agricultural lands to other uses which now threatens the food security of the country because of the significant reduction in the cultivated land area being farmed to produce sufficient volume of agricultural crops for the nation’s consumption.