Hatchery seen to boost chicken production in Maguindanao

MAGUINDANAO -- With a new hatchery that can produce at least 60,000 chicks weekly, local farmers will have free chickens to raise for profit while their families weave inaul fabric for extra income.Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said Sunday the hatchery in Buluan town that he and Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu inaugurated Friday could turn Maguindanao province into chicken capital of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao if provided with government technical support.Located in Barangay Maslabeng in Buluan, the modern hatchery also has a poultry dressing facility that can employ some 200 full-time workers.Piñol said the hatchery was built by the Mangudadatu clan as part of its charitable activities for impoverished Muslim, Christian and Lumad families in Maguindanao’s 36 towns. It is the first of its kind in ARMM, Piñol said.Besides Maguindanao, the autonomous region also covers Lanao del Sur in mainland Mindanao and the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.The inauguration of the facility, attended by entrepreneurs and officials of different Mindanao business clubs, is one of the highlights of the February 5-14 Inaul Festival.The festival, the second since 2016, is now a yearly activity of the Maguindanao provincial government.It involves all 36 municipal governments in Maguindanao and aims to revive the centuries-old inaul weaving industry owing to the fabric’s good domestic and foreign market potential.Inaul-inspired clothes and the kris were emblems of authority of the Moro sultans long before the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, commissioned by the Spanish monarch, arrived in Limasawa on March 16, 1521, the advent of Christianity in what was to become the Philippines. Livestock-raising and inaul weaving are good complementing income-generating ventures for Maguindanao’s Muslim, indigenous Lumad and Christian residents, Piñol said.Piñol, who hails from nearby Mlang town in North Cotabato, said the central office of the Department of Agriculture is ready to extend loans to farmers in Maguindanao who want to avail of Mangudadatu’s planned dispersal of broiler chicks in the barrios. We have a special initiative related to that which we call `livestock out growing program’ that we can let them avail of, Piñol said.Mangudadatu said the provincial government’s newly-constructed hatchery can produce an average of 60,000 broiler chicks weekly.Piñol said President Duterte is keen on helping Maguindanao residents bounce back from conflicts and calamities that hit the province in recent years. Add to that the adverse effects of the now infamous `Maguindanao massacre’ in 2009 that shocked the world, Piñol said.More than 50 people perished in the incident, among them Mangudadatu’s wife, Genalyn, and 32 journalists from across central Mindanao. Mangudadatu was still vice mayor of Buluan then.The victims of the carnage were to file for him his certificate of candidacy for governor of Maguindanao at the capitol in Shariff Aguak town when their convoy was flagged down by gunmen led by leaders of the Ampatuan clan.Their vehicles were herded to a hill in Sitio Salman in Barangay Masalay in Ampatuan municipality, where they were killed using assault rifles and machineguns.The Ampatuans did not want any politician to contest the planned candidacy of a key clan member, Andal Ampatuan, Jr., for provincial governor during the May 2010 elections, then barely five months away.Piñol said in a scale of ten, he would put to eight his measure of the provincial government’s accomplishments in improving Maguindanao’s economy in the past seven years. Agricultural plantations are sprouting everywhere. Local and foreign investors have since been coming in with utmost confidence, he said.Piñol said he is aware too that the Maguindanao provincial government has distributed more than three million orchard, coconut and oil palm seedlings to local farmers from 2013 to 2017. It’s time to diversify. Experts in my department find viability in combining chicken-raising and inaul weaving as good diversifications, Piñol said.He said while waiting for the time to harvest rice and corn crops, farmers and their families can weave inaul that can be sold abroad and raise chickens in their yards at the same time.