AGGIE UPDATE

San Mateo’s peach- orange salted eggs

SAN MATEO, Isabela -- This town is fast gaining a niche in the salted-egg industry with residents now enjoying results of a duck-dispersal program launched by the municipal government a few years back.

San Mateo had also been noted for its environmentally-friendly practices and Galing Pook award-winning mungbean program for which Mayor Roberto Agcaoili was cited as Isabela’s most outstanding mayor last year.

Now, there is an abundance of duck eggs produced every day by recipient families in the town’s 33 barangays.

This prompted a local women’s group to engage in salted egg production.

Led by Dr. Crispina Agcaoili, who is the mayor’s wife, the Isabela Green Ladies Organization created a livelihood arm called "Pag-asa Bayanihan Association."

"While we maintain our established role in keeping sustainable environmental and health-protection campaign in town, we were prompted to come up with a livelihood group in order to keep many bodies and souls together, figuratively speaking," Agcaoili said.

The group has opted to focus on egg processing not only to provide jobs for many housewives but also to add value and keep a sustainable market for the town’s daily egg production.

"Because salted-egg processing is done in many places in the country, we have developed our own version to have a distinct taste quality and uniquely different color," the mayor’s wife said.

The San Mateo salted egg is organically colored with the locally grown "atsuete." "We do not use the conventional red or fuchsia pink chemical dyes to color our salted eggs because it was discovered by food experts that when it penetrates the egg interior and eaten, it could be hazardous to one’s health," Doctor Agcaoili said.

Unlike the common red salted eggs in the market, the San Mateo salted egg tastes not too salty and has an immaculate-white, oily-yellow yolk with uniquely peach-orange coat which attracts many consumers.

"Sobrang sarap (It’s so delicious) that I even ask a friend to regularly send trays of salted eggs to me in Manila. It’s mouth-watering, and one can’t resist it," said budding photojournalist and 2006 Miss Isabela beauty titlist Mary Ann Laggui who goes to school in the big city.

University of La Salette coed Leanne Lopez of Alicia town said she would secretly hire a tricycle to go to the adjacent town of San Mateo just to buy a tray of salted eggs.

"Once you have tasted it, you would crave for more," the student said.

Because of the popularity that the San Mateo salted egg has gained, the San Mateo municipal government has registered it as its "One Town, One Product" (OTOP) with the Department of Trade and Industry.

The San Mateo salted egg has stood out in many national trade fairs, selling an average of 5,000 pieces a day.

Mayor Agcaoili said he will push for the upgrading of the duck breeds to increase production and meet the high demand for San Mateo’s processed eggs. -- CP


Strong palay harvests despite typhoons -- DA Agriculture officials remain hopeful they can still achieve this year’s palay production target of 17.32 million, or 6.67 percent higher than last year’s record yield of 16.24 million MT, as summer harvests have already exceeded the original projection by 200,000 MT or four million bags of unmilled rice.

Secretary Arthur Yap of the Department of Agriculture said DA officials believe they can also hit their original target of 10 million-plus tons for the wet or main cropping season despite the onslaught of typhoon “Frank,” on condition that they can implement fully and quickly enough their proposed farm rehabilitation program to offset production losses in Western Visayas and 11 more regions buffeted by the cyclone.

“Given the better-than-expected summer harvests as a result of the Arroyo administration’s continued higher spending on intervention measures meant to boost palay productivity, we remain hopeful about similarly hitting our original production target for the wet crop once we get the go-signal from Malacañang to implement our farm rehabilitation program for the palay-growing provinces hardest-hit by typhoon ‘Frank,’” Yap said.

Yap gave this forecast as the latest report by DA’s Rice Action Center (DARAC), which is headed by Undersecretary Jesus Emmanuel Paras, showed that farmers have already reaped 7.3 million MT, or 200,000 tons more than the 7.1-million-ton target for the dry or summer crop, from 1.79 million hectares planted to the grain.

Total harvest volume, which is already 8.96% more than the 6.7 million MT produced in last year’s dry crop, will even go higher because the latest DARAC covers only 92% of the 1.94 million hectares devoted to palay this season.

DARAC reported that Central Luzon and Cagayan Valley— where 92.86% and 95.77% of their respected palay fields have already been harvested—produced the highest yields at 1.4 M MT and 1.13 M MT, respectively, as of end-June. Farmers in all regions have harvested their crops in more than 90% of all palay fields, save for those in the Cordillera Administrative Region and Bicol, where the respective harvest areas covered 87.30% and 74.18% of total acreage, DARAC bared.

To hit or surpass its production target in the wet crop, Yap had directed the DA’s Regional Executive Directors (REDs) to start working out with governors and mayors the intervention programs such as fertilizer subsidies that local government units can help bankroll with Internal Revenue Allotment differentials that LGUs are about to receive following President Arroyo’s recent issuance of an Executive Order monetizing such IRA funds.

President Arroyo issued EO 723 two months ago on the understanding that local executives will use part of the money to fund food production programs in their respective localities. Totalling P12.5 billion, the would-be monetized IRA funds represent the difference between the amount that LGUs were supposed to get and what they did receive when the national budgets were just re-enacted in fiscal years 2001 and 2004.

Yap said LGUs could use their IRA share to, among others, provide counterpart funds for a new DA program to provide fertilizer subsidies to palay farmers equivalent to P250 per bag. The DA started distributing such discount coupons last month in major palay-growing regions like Nueva Ecija and Pangasinan as well as in typhoon-ravaged provinces like Iloilo and Romblon, in time for the wet crop.

With fertilizer prices doubling in the domestic market to a range of P1,500 to P1,900 per bag from their year-ago levels in the face of the sharply rising petroleum prices, Yap said this joint subsidy program of the DA and LGUs will certainly help cushion the impact of this price spiral on local farmers and encourage them to use more of this vital input to further increase their per-hectare yields.

A formal partnership with LGU executives, highlighted by the detail of devolved local-government agricultural technicians to the Department’s regional offices, had been forged by the DA with the League of Provinces of the Philippines .

Also, a separate “collaborative extension service” arrangement between the DA and state universities and colleges was worked out during a recent consultative meeting with the heads of 40 SUCs.

Moreover, Yap and Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr. signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) last month committing participating members of the House of Representatives to each allot P5 million of their Priority Development Assistance Fund or PDAF allocations for credit support to farmers in their respective congressional districts.

The DA presented to Malacañang during the last Cabinet meeting a rehabilitation program for the typhoon-hit provinces that includes subsidies for certified and good seeds, inorganic fertilizer and Bio-N or microbial inoculants, and transport and hauling support for farmers with damaged palay and corn lands.

For typhoon-affected fisheries stakeholders the DA’s relief plan includes a fry/fingerling dispersal program; handout of fishing gear like payaos, bancas, fish traps, fish corrals and gillnets; replacement of buoys and markers in fish sanctuaries; and the repair of damaged facilities of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR).

For the HVCC subsector, the plan provides for subsidies for seeds, tissue cultured plantlets or other planting materials for vegetable, banana and mango growers in completely damaged areas, plus the intensified implementation of technology transfer programs to encourage the off-season production of these high-value crops.

Subsidies for feed assistance to backyard swine raisers, a native chicken dispersal project, animal health programs and laboratory services are also be included in the rehabilitation plan for the benefit of affected stakeholders in the livestock and poultry sub-sector. – DA press release