Duck growers urged to target export market

The Department of Agriculture (DA) will help modernize the local duck industry and is encouraging local duck growers to set their sights on the growing duck export market.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap cited the export potential of the country’s duck and duck products and said going into exports would be the way to go to expand markets and generate more foreign exchange earnings for producers.

Yap noted the various meat and egg products derived from ducks including roasted duck, duck liver, salted eggs, century eggs, balut and day-old ducklings.

He said export markets are open to processed duck meat products including pressed dried duck, meat balls, smoked duck, salted broiled duck, duck meat patty and dried sliced duck meat.

Morever, there is a growing demand for other duck by-products such as duck feathers which are used as filling for thermal clothes and shuttlecocks for badminton.

On the other hand, live ducks are used to control weeds and snails in rice fields and orchards.

At the recent duck workshop held last week at the Information Technology Center for Agriculture and Fisheries at the DA, representatives from the Bureau of Animal Industry, the Livestock Development Council (LDC), the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development met with delegates from the local governments of Regions II, III, IV, VIII, IX and XI, the private sector and the academe to discuss measures to further enhance the local duck industry.

LDC executive director Pedro Ocampo pushed for the creation of a duck industry roadmap that would include concrete plans to develop and modernize the duck industry, with new methods of production and processing, all with a view to increasing exports.

He noted that currently, the Philippines’ exports of duck products are limited to balut and salted eggs to the Middle East.

Ocampo said LDC has studied the supply chain of ducks to maximize benefits to producers in every stage, from production, post-production and marketing.

The estimated inventory of ducks in the country this year is 10 million, up from last year’s 9.8 million. The top backyard producing regions are Region I with 1.2 million (15.86 percent), Region III with 1.2 million (14.78 percent) and Region II with 1.1 million (14.13 percent). The top commercial producers are Region III with one million (44.09 percent); Region 4 with 768,803 (32.4 percent); and Region II with 153,501 (6.47 percent).