THE Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) said on Thursday it has inked a partnership with the local government of Victoria, Oriental Mindoro, and the Mindoro State College of Agriculture and Technology (MinsSCAT) to revitalize the calamansi industry in the town.
Searca, along with the local government and the state college, signed a memorandum of agreement for the joint implementation of the project, “Revitalizing Camalansi Industry in Victoria, Oriental Mindoro, through Strengthening Linkages among Farmers, Local Government Unit, National Government Agencies, State Universities and Colleges, Civil Society Organizations and the Private Sector.”
Searca Director Gil C. Saguiguit Jr. said the project aims to rehabilitate the town’s calamansi industry to make calamansi farming “economically viable, environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive.”
“Mindoro is a major producer of calamansi in the country, yet, it has been experiencing huge declines in production due to lack of appropriate marketing arrangements and value-adding activities for calamansi,” Saguiguit said in a statement.
Searca said the project seeks to raise the yields, reduce postharvest losses during peak seasons, increase the production of calamansi-based products, diversify products and markets, and improve the prices of the products sold, thus, boosting the income of the farmers.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that the country’s calamansi production in the recent years has been steadily declining.
For 2014, calamansi production in the Philippines declined by 2.04 percent to 160,740.43 metric tons, (MT) from 164,091.06 MT in 2013.
About 51.43 percent or 82,663.78 metric tons of the total output in 2014 came from Oriental Mindoro. This is 5.75 percent lower than the province’s production in 2013 at 87,703.77 MT.
