Negros Occidental village farmers bid muddy trips adieu with newly paved road
Some 600 local farmers from a village in Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental will no longer have to deal with muddy trips while transporting their produce to market centers.

This, after a 856-lineal meter farm-to-market road in Barangay Hilamonan, Kabankalan City was recently paved with concrete, giving great comfort to farmers during the transportation of their goods, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Mark Villar said.
The road improvement project involved the paving of a five-meter wide road with inclusion of grouted riprap as slope protection and reflectorized thermoplastic pavement markings.
Villar said that the newly-concreted local road has been "greatly beneficial to the farming communities of Sitio Utod and Sitio Pasto that specialize in producing rice, sugarcane, and fruit bearing trees."
“The concreted road now enables roughly 600 local farmers to have easier transport of their produce to market centers in Kabankalan City without experiencing the muddy route the road used to turn into especially during rainy days,” the secretary said.
"Preventing the need to rent and pay higher price for certain types of trucks to haul agricultural products lowers transportation costs for farmers, allowing them to take home more income to their families," he added.
Aside from facilitating better farm to market connectivity, the agricultural road also allows for improved access to basic government services for residents of Barangay Hilamonan and other remote barangays in Kabankalan City.
The concreting of the P9.85-million road was completed in June 2021. It is part of a convergence project of the DPWH and the Department of Agriculture (DA), with funding sourced from last year's Bayanihan to Recover as One Act.