Philippines stands to secure a niche in the global chicken-export market if it can reduce feed prices to global levels by producing more yellow corn, particularly the high-yielding biotech varieties.
In a recent study undertaken by Liborio S. Cabanilla, U-Primo E. Rodriguez and Antonio Jesus A. Quilloy for the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) and supported by the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) and the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), it was found out that the country has been importing chicken minimally and may even succeed in being self-sufficient in chicken if it can sustain the growth in corn production.
Assistant Agriculture Secretary Edilberto de Luna, also the chief of the National Corn Program (NCP), said that with a huge stockpile of corn and the expected bumper harvest for the first quarter, the country might be able to supply the feed ingredients that the poultry industry needs for the rest of the year.
De Luna credits the increase in corn production by farmers cultivating biotech corn for the achievement, noting that since 2003, the land devoted to Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn had skyrocketed to 750,000 hectares. He added that the country used to import about 1 million metric tons (MMT) of corn to support the livestock industry.
