Native Chickens For Brave Ilocanos To Raise!

Within the “New Thinking for Agriculture” by head of the Department of Agriculture, DA and Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie, there are small & big roles for any local government unit, LGU (partnership with local efforts), and any Filipino farmer (such as native chickens to raise). I’ll go with the Ilocano farmer anytime.

I am now in my hometown Asingan in Pangasinan and, together with Chair Roger Daranciang of the Nagkaisa Multipurpose Cooperative, will be talking to Mayor Carlos F Lopez Jr for a Nagkaisa-LGU joint 4.2 ha project. It calls for a partnership that will be the first in Asingan, that covers the whole production-to-marketing value chain with any of the native animal species such as chickens and pigs, for food & tourism. The project will attempt to bring down the costs to the minimum and bring up the returns to the maximum. The goal is not merely poverty reduction but poverty eradication, not poverty amelioration but poverty elimination. This production-to-marketing arrangement borrows from the inclusive market-oriented development, IMOD, model practiced by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, when now Manong Willie was still the Director General of ICRISAT. IMOD favors the farmers, not the merchants.

The Family-Friendly Approach, FFA, is my idea. It is a first in PH farming projects. With Nagkaisa, we are seeking sponsorship by the DA. With financial loans from the DA through LandBank, FFA will require interested members to train in the care of native animals and extend easy loans to members, both the husband & wife signing documents to acknowledge the transaction.

A family that works together wins together.

The image above is on page 106 of the book titled Philippine Native Animals that came off the press March 2016, 200 pages, published by the National Swine & Poultry Research & Development Center, NSPRDC, based in Tiaong, Quezon. (The NSPRDC is a unit of the Bureau of Animal Industry, BAI, which is an agency of the DA.) The authors were Rene Santiago (Chief, NSPRDC), Angel Lambio (UPLB Emeritus Professor) & Karen Dimaranan (Researcher, NSPRDC). I edited & desktop-published the volume. (I took the photo above with my Lumix FZ100 camera; the superimposed head-idea icon is from Iconfinder[1].)

Of our native chickens, Mr Santiago says (page 16): “A study has found … that consumers ‘are willing to pay a premium price for native chicken meat that is recognized for its unique taste and flavor.’ … The supplies of such and other native foods from poultry and livestock are currently quite limited, which presents wide opportunities for investment and entrepreneurship of any scale by Filipinos.

Have you noticed that even in reforestation, we Filipinos use exotic tree species, not the native ones? With Filipino families in their farms raising native animals, we hope to experience what American poet Robert Frost wrote glowingly about in his poem, “The Road Not Taken.” Here are the last 3 lines:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.@517

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[1] https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/1049503/business_entrepreneurship_finance_idea_mind_strategy_icon