The Bloomberg recognition for Butuan City as among the finalists to the 2021 Global Mayors Challenge is a great honor to the people of the city.
“Butuan City is honored to be selected as one of the 50 Champion Cities in the Bloomberg 2021 Global Mayors Challenge,” Mayor Ronnie Vicente C. Lagnada said in a statement Wednesday.
Butuan was among the 50 cities worldwide picked by Bloomberg with having the most innovative urban solutions in fighting the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), particularly on health and well-being.
The City of Manila also made it to the list.
As part of the 50 finalists worldwide, Butuan will have the opportunity to access world-renowned experts in innovation and data to help the city improve its ideas, particularly in the response to the impacts of the pandemic.
“Butuan faces high rates of hunger and food insecurity, in part because of its struggles around local food production. The city will fine-tune an ineffective agricultural market by giving farmers predictive data to make better decisions about the type and amount of crops to plant, and fix some commodity prices to reduce risk on vegetables and high-demand foods,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg considered Butuan’s idea on agriculture and marketing as compelling because of the “ambitious goals the city believes it could achieve in the short term through this initiative, including but not limited to: increasing vegetable production from 19 percent of need in 2020 to 150 percent by 2023, increasing farmers’ income by 50 percent and reducing the average vegetable retail price by 50 percent.”
Lagnada said the city government “looks forward to joining and learning from this global community of innovative cities as we work to improve upon our idea in the months ahead.”
The Bloomberg Mayors Challenge is a worldwide competition that aims to spur innovative ideas for the improvement of cities and their inhabitants.
Bloomberg said the challenge also encourages leaders “to think outside the box about how to confront their most difficult challenges.”
Source: Philippines News Agency