The initiative "Sustainable Agricultural Environment Establishment through Durian Producer Organization in Mindanao, Philippines" recently launched will make this happen.
The International Center for Asian Mission for the Poor's (CAMP) country director, Cho Buyoung, announced on Wednesday that the organization had decided to support the durian growers in Davao City's Calinan and Tugbok Districts.
“This project will be funded by the Korean government. It has a program plan for the country mostly in agriculture. In the agriculture part, we are focusing on Mindanao because of the background of the conversation between the Korean government agency, which is the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KoiCA), and the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA). When they discussed the development plan in Mindanao, we chose Davao City as a priority and we planned all the programs together with the farmers,”
Buyoung said during Wednesdays at Habi at Kape media forum.
The program, which is scheduled to begin this year, aims to create a sustainable agricultural environment in Davao City, notably in the Calinan and Tugbok Districts, through the practices of durian processors.
The University of Southern Mindanao (USM), which will support farmers on the technical side of the project, the University of the Philippines-Mindanao, which will aid farmers on the social side, and Unorka Mindanao, which will organize the farmers, make up the project's three main parts.
“We organize the farmers and the cooperatives to improve the volume and have the power to the sellers and the last is redeveloping the market where to sell the durian. We are looking at the agricultural part, environmental, and social to make a value chain for durian production. It is our main program,” Boyoung said.
She also said that this is a three-year program, which has a project cost of $1.3 million, but they are looking at expanding this after three years.
“Because every three years we will have the evaluation and check the outlooks. So we are seeing a 10-year program for this,” she said.
Meanwhile, for the durians produce from the said project, Boyoung said they will be marketing them to the Luzon area.
“First the durians will be going to Luzon because we have a program in the Luzon area also same in the value chain and we have our outlet in Metro Manila and also having a delivery system in Metro Manila so we are expecting to sell those durians to the Luzon area first and the second is the long term with the processing facilities we are expecting them to be exported to Korea as well but it’s not yet confirmed but we are trying to make those things happen,” she said.
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