by Carlos Bautista

Kidapawan City (6 February) -- North Cotabato Vice Governor Manny Piñol has initiated moves to revive and rehabilitate the hog industry in the province of North Cotabato.

In his opening statement in today's Sangguniang Panlalawigan regular session, Vice Gov. Piñol bared that he has established contact with a buyer of pork in Manila who could provide a better price for local hog raisers.

Hogs from local raisers will be processed in a modern meat processing plant in Polomolok, and brought to Manila where it would be sold at a price higher than what is offered to raisers locally.

"This will be very good for our backyard hog raisers," Vice Gov. Piñol said.

The Vice Governor has already met local hog raisers twice to discuss the details of the project which he says would initiate local economic activities and alleviate the economic problems of North Cotabato in the face of the worldwide economic crisis.

The hog raisers are upbeat about the positive prospects presented by the project.

Providing a better market for local hog meat is not the only target of the project," Vice Gov. Piñol said.

"The second part of the project is the establishment of a local feed mill that will process feeds for our local hog raisers at a lower price," he said.

"Right now our hog raisers are complaining that the price of feeds is very, very high. Understandably so, because the yellow corn that we produce, the copra meal that we produce in North Cotabato are brought to Manila, to General Santos, processed into feeds and shipped back to us. You can just imagine the mark up that will be done in the process."

Vice Gov. Piñol said that if a local feed mill is established in the province, local yellow corn producers are provided a steady market for their produce, jobs could be provided for local labor, and lower priced feeds would be available for local hog raisers.

"This will increase the income-generating opportunity for our hog raisers, the bulk of which are backyard raisers," he said.