Going agribusiness

For decades, the people of Eastern Visayas have largely been dependent on coconuts, rice, abaca, rootcrop and fish production as sources of income.

Around 50 percent of the labor force in this region is employed in the agriculture sector.

Coconuts are sold as copra, abaca as fiber, rootcrops as rootcrops and fish as fish.

The last two seem to be a play on words. I want to emphasize that what we need to do is to add value to these and similar products so that we can sell them and create jobs and increase income at the same time.

In recent months, I have come across several agribusiness proposals which are innovative and show a lot of potential for commercial scale production. Among these are: white cheese from carabao milk, dried jackfruits, organic vegetable farming and seaweed pickles.

The abaca bags from Southern Leyte, “banig” or tikog mats from Basey, Samar, tinapa from Calbayog City and binagol from Dagami, Leyte are familiar examples of successful agribusiness products.

There are many similar products our region can process and even sell as exports.

We should note that Eastern Visayas produces annually around 515,000 metric tons of copra, 830,000 metric tons of rice, 23,500 metric tons of abaca and 174,008 metric tons of fish.

Our fishing grounds are all around the islands, our sources of water are abundant and fertile land is everywhere. We are, indeed, blessed to have these resources.

The important point to consider is: it is only in adding value to our agricultural products through agribusiness that we can speed up our region’s socio-economic growth. We have to attain a growth rate of at least 8 percent to make the quality of life in the region a lot better than it is today. Right now we are nearing 6.5 percent.

To put it in stronger words: we need copra plus plus plus, rice plus plus plus, and abaca plus plus plus.