After several successes of the Department of Agriculture, DA
chief Manny Piñol has brought the Filipinos another good news.
On December 11, the DA secretary announced that Bohol island
is about to become the Philippine’s dairy capital after his meeting with Organizacion
Mundial de Sanidad Animal or OIE in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The OIE have laid down the guidelines in allowing the
Philippines to import breeding materials for meat and dairy cattle from Brazil
and Argentina.
Sec. Piñol shared that he will soon meet with Bohol Governor
Edgar Chatto and Ubay, Bohol Mayor Costan Reyes to discuss and present a
proposal.
The Department of Agriculture owns 3,000-hectare area in Bohol,
called the Ubay Stock Farm, thus the island is being considered as the Center
of the Philippine Dairy Development Program.
Check out Sec. Piñol’s detailed report below posted through
his Facebook page;
BOHOL ISLAND PROVINCE EYED AS PHILIPPINE DAIRY CAPITAL
Buenos Aires, Argentina - On Dec. 19, two days after my return from the week-long World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference here, I will be meeting with Bohol Governor Edgar Chatto and Ubay, Bohol Mayor Costan Reyes to present to them a proposal which would turn the Island Province of Bohol into the Dairy Capital of the Philippines.
Bohol Island is being considered as the Center of the Philippine Dairy Development Program mainly because the Department of Agriculture owns a 3,000-hectare area called the Ubay Stock Farm and also because it is a natural confinement area for imported cattle since it is an island.
Added to that is the fact that Bohol is a net importer of meat thus the possibility of animals being shipped out of Bohol is almost zero.
Should Bohol officials and the people accept the project, the province stands to benefit greatly since along with the establishment of the Dairy Farm in Ubay, we will ask big milk companies like Nestle to look into the prospects of establishing a fresh milk-packaging plant in the Ubay Stock Farm.
The idea is to ensure that the milk produced by the estimated 5,000 heads of Girolando Dairy Cattle would be transferred directly from the milking parlors to the the fresh milk packaging plants.
The 5,000 heads of Girolando Dairy Cattle are expected to produce 22-million liters of milk in one year.
The project is expected to provide employment for the local people and additional sources of income for the local farmers who would be engaged in the planting of forage and in the fattening of the male offsprings of the dairy cattle.
When the Dairy Cattle population in the Ubay Stock Farm has increased, a municipality-based Dairy Farming program will be introduced to the different towns of the province to be owned and operated by Bohol farmers and women, thus turning the whole island into the Dairy Capital of the country.
To complete the set up, a modern slaughterhouse and processing facility will also be set up in the town of Ubay.
The establishment of Dairy Farms in Bohol will also boost organic farming in the island since one of the components of the project is to process animal waste into organic fertilizer.
There are, however, issues which must be presented clearly to the people of Ubay and Bohol.
It must be explained that while the Girolando cattle from Brazil will go through OIE supervised quarantine procedures, the animals are coming from a country which still vaccinates against Food and Mouth Disease.
As Dr. Jose Osvaldo Barcos, OIE Director for the Americas, emphasized, there is no 100% guarantee that the animals which tested negative for FMD prior to the shipment would really be free from the disease.
It is because of this that the people of Ubay will have to be consulted and measures to ensure that there will be no raising of livestock in the vicinity of the stock farm will be presented of their consideration.
Alternative sources of income will be offered to the farmers in Ubay and surrounding areas like tractors to replace their carabaos.
The province will also have to agree that there should be no shipment of live animals from Bohol to other parts of the country for at least six months after the arrival of the Girolando Dairy Cattle.
Also invited to join the meeting on Dec. 19 are the stakeholders of the livestock industry in Bohol, representatives of big milk companies and officials of the Department of Agriculture in Region VII.
Very soon, Bohol will not only be known for the Chocolate Hills but also as the producer of fresh milk in the country.
Source: Manny Piñol FB Page
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