CAGAYAN -- It is difficult for an individual farmer to survive if the operational expenses in land preparation, high cost of fuel, fertilizer and farm inputs are to be considered.
Executive Director Narciso A. Adillo of Department of Agriculture’s Regional Field Office 2, raised this point in his inspirational message in the Solana West Farmers Cooperative (SOWESFACO) Anniversary and General Assembly at its compound in Ubong, Solana, Cagayan.
It is thus deemed necessary that farmers should be bunched up so they could work together for greater output, much greater than the output of a single farmer who takes care of everything.
Such is the very essence of the F2C2 or Farm and Fisheries Clustering and Consolidation, a holistic approach now being instituted to help farmers become more productive.
The Department said that the F2C2 program shall give priorities to community production and processing projects that promote better coordinated and organized production, as well as value chain systems towards increased productivity.
The strategy is far better than the small stand-alone traditional farming and fishing practices.
During SOWESFACO’s 26th founding anniversary, Edillo lauded the cooperative which, he said, has become stable and more competitive.
Edillo added that SOWESFACO is being prepared to become F2C2 big brother to aggressively jumpstart consolidation in Central Cagayan.
DA has given the cooperative a high-end rice mill for quality rice value adding, a warehouse, farm implements and machineries from PhilMech in grants totaling P27 million.
Edillo added that the irrigation system under NIA will already be in the fold of DA.
On the other hand, Solana Vice Mayor Meynard Carag stressed the importance of irrigation to attain volume of production.
"We already have a feasibility study on our irrigation expansion and I have already discussed this to NIA and to Dir. Edillo. We need this expansion for larger rice production," said Mayor Carag.