DAR eyes support for Mega Farm

Aiming to make farming climate-resilient to attract more private investors, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) is eyeing the support of lawmakers to back up its latest anti-poverty project dubbed “The Mega Farm” to help improve farmers’ lives.

DAR Secretary John Castriciones said the program also aims to reduce the cost of farm inputs, enhance food self-sufficiency, link up with institutional and commercial buyers of raw farm products and ease poverty in the countryside.

Earlier, Quezon Representative Mark Enverga committed to support the program as a way to champion the cause of the agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARB) and win the support of his fellow lawmakers for the project that is seen as the key to spurring rural development.

Enverga, who has been inspired by the prospect of the project in also further strengthening the agricultural sector, expressed his willingness to sponsor a bill relative to the project in the House of Representative following a recent meeting with Secretary Castriciones.

“For the empowerment of the farming sector, you can count on me,” Enverga told Castriciones following their meeting.

The program also aims to reduce the cost of farm inputs, enhance food self-sufficiency, link up with institutional and commercial buyers of raw farm products and ease poverty in the countryside.

Castriciones told Enverga that the project is also geared towards the advancement of farming in the country, from subsistence to commercial, to increase productivity and improve the quality of farm goods.

He added that the mega farm project is an improvement from the “old” Block Farming that was introduced in the early 2010s and was primarily implemented in sugarcane plantations.

“Like the block farming, the mega farm is a cluster of contiguous farms that are consolidated to form a sizeable plantation capable of producing large volume of farm products to meet the demands of institutional and commercial buyers,” Castriciones said in a statement.

“But unlike block farming, the mega farm is open to different highvalue cash crops,” he stressed.

The DAR-Project Management Service, for its part, revealed that the mega farm nearly doubles the land area covered under the block farming.

Undersecretary for Support Services Emily Padilla, said the former covers at least 50 hectares of contiguous farmlots awarded to ARB under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, 20 hectares more than the average farm intended for

block farming.