TABUK CITY, Kalinga – The provincial government broke ground a two-storey agricultural research center and farm mechanization building to further improve the production of the region’s rice granary.
Provincial Agriculturist Engr. Domingo Bakilan on Tuesday said the building will centralize all extensions of the Provincial Agricultural Services such as research, production, engineering, and administrative division to consolidate work and complement each other’s programs.
Bakilan said the site is at Bulanao here, which was allotted an initial PHP2 million to start the construction which they hope to be finished in a year.
Kalinga is the top rice producer in the Cordillera Administrative Region with its most prominent product the “Tabuk rice” which is popularly characterized as aromatic.
Governor Ferdinand Tubban, in an interview on Tuesday, said the province’s backbone is agriculture that requires improved agricultural services.
“With the construction of a building for our agriculture office, we expect that farmers will receive more and better services and the agricultural industry of the province will also improve more,” Tubban said.
In 2019, Kalinga produced 158,284 metric tons or 37.8 percent of the Cordillera Administrative Region’s production of 418,321 metric tons.
Tubban said the start of the construction of the agriculture research and mechanization building is proof of the shared governance that the provincial government is advocating.
Source: Philippines News Agency
