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The ongoing modern corn cultivation technology
transfer project in the Caraga Region has yielded the farmers a
two-fold growth in production, the Manila Economic and Cultural
Office (MECO) announced Wednesday.
The Department of Agriculture and
Taiwan’s Food and Fertilizer Technology Center, as well as MECO
and the Northern Mindanao State Institute of Science and Technology
are jointly undertaking this modern corn cultivation project.
About 60 percent of the total
corn production in the country comes from Mindanao and at least 500
Caraga farmers stand to benefit.
This corn-farming project is a
three-year agricultural technical assistance program that started in
2006 to improve corn productivity and its quality in the Caraga
region through modern cultivation techniques and new hybrid corn
varieties.
Antonio Basilio, MECO Taiwan
managing director and resident representative, said that initial
results showed an average yield of more than three metric tons per
hectare, while other areas yielded as high as eight metric tons per
hectare.
“These encouraging results
surpassed the project’s principal mission, which is to improve
corn yield in Caraga to three metric tons per hectare from a very
low regional average of 1.77 metric tons per hectare,” Basilio
said.
Basilio said the project
underscored the importance of the farmers’ ability to organize
them following Taiwanese agricultural technology, including
propagation of parent plants and the production of hybrid seeds.
This would ensure their local availability and distribution at very
competitive prices.
He said farmers in Caraga are
expected to earn a more significant return on their investment
through the use of modern cultivation techniques and hybrid corn
varieties.
--Katrina Mennen A. Valdez
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