Cotabato farmers receive livestock for breeding

COTABATO CITY — The Cotabato provincial government and the Department of Agriculture-12 facilitated from Monday until Wednesday the distribution of P1.3 million worth of livestock to farmers that they can breed to produce offspring they can sell.

Matalam Vice Mayor Ralph Ryan Rafael on Thursday said that up to 110 farmers in their municipality benefitted from the dispersal of goats by the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist under Gov. Emmylou Mendoza and DA-12.

“It’s a big, big help to our farming constituents,” Rafael said Thursday.

More than 200 other Muslim and Christian farmers in Cotabato’s Carmen and Arakan towns also received goats that they can breed from the office of Mendoza and DA-12 during the three-day dispersal activities.

Farmers in Matalam, Carmen and Arakan rely largely on propagation of hybrid corn and other short-term crops and vegetables as main sources of income.

“Now they shall have an alternative source of income by raising livestock,” Rafael said.

A Moro farmer, Odin Samsudin, said that he shall keep all the female offspring for breeding purpose of the doe and buck that he got from the Cotabato provincial government last Tuesday.

“We are happy to have benefited from this animal dispersal activity of our provincial government and DA-12,” Samsudin said in Filipino, in a Maguindanaon accent.

Cotabato province covers 17 towns and more than 40 barangays in its capital, Kidapawan City, where about 70% of residents are farmers.

Mendoza, who, as governor, is also chairperson of the Regional Development Council-12, said that her office shall soon expand its livestock dispersal in other municipalities under her jurisdiction.

“We shall do more of that in the coming months as a tie-up program of our provincial government and the DA-12 and its central office,” Mendoza said.