CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – A total of 27 farmers' cooperatives and associations (FCAs) in Nueva Ecija will receive farm machinery and equipment that could help boost their productivity.
Bernando Valdez, chief of the Nueva Ecija Provincial Agriculture Office, said Thursday that the certificates of ownership were already awarded to the FCAs for the agricultural interventions that could increase their income.
Valdez said the machinery includes four units of four-wheel drive tractors, four combined harvesters, and 20 pumps and engines.
He said the formal turnover of the farm machinery and equipment would be done by the end of July.
The initiative, he noted, is under the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) mechanization program that aims to elevate the level of farming through the use of the different machinery and equipment that could help boost palay (unhusked rice) productivity.
“Ang tanging hinihiling lamang po ng DA, iyon pong ating mga makinarya na natatanggap ay atin pong i-maintain nang mabuti para mas makatulong pa po sa iba nating mga kasamahan (The DA’s only request is to maintain well the machinery that we receive so that others would also benefit from them),” he said in a local news program.
Nueva Ecija remains the top producer of palay in Central Luzon.
Based on the report of the Philippine Statistics Authority 3 (Central Luzon), Nueva Ecija produced 246,758 metric tons of palay in the first quarter of the year.
This constitutes almost one-third or 31.9 percent of the region’s total production during the same period. (PNA)
