by Larry Lopez

 TABUK, Kalinga, Thursday March 17 – Considered as the implementation bible for the Agri-Pinoy program, the agricultural roadmap aligns various efforts all aimed at achieving the targets of the agriculture sector in the province.


 The production roadmap, which actually contains the six-year plan of the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPAG), showcases all inputs from the eight municipalities to form only one action plan for the province.


 Provincial agriculturist Gerry Jose said the common plan would solve problems arising from making individual approaches, which was observed in the past to cause fragmented results.


All services involved in food production and their budgetary requirements are listed as bases for annual budgeting to the Department of Agriculture (DA).


Jose, however, qualified that insertions of additional items can still be made in the succeeding year. If there are new inputs that were not included in the plan, DA allows the inclusion provided it is accompanied by sufficient justification, Jose explained.


All resolutions and requests outside the provincial plan shall not be entertained. This would discourage the practice by some proponents of making personal proposals and follow-ups at DA, Jose said.


Citing as example the requests for farm-to-market roads (FMR), Jose said there will be cross-checking to be made whether the area requesting really offers enough production potential and is in need of the facility.
The roadmap, according to Jose, is designed to further improve the province’s rice sufficiency level this year at 167 percent to 184 percent in 2016.


 Target rice production this year is posted at 204,219MT against its food requirement of 44,055MT while in 2016 it is 390,885MT against 51,322MT.


 Kalinga which has the largest rice production area of 19,841 hectares in the region, contributes about 36 percent to the palay requirement of the Cordillera.(PIA-CAR/Kalinga)