DA lauds NFHFI scholarship project

Farmers belonging to the country’s P110 billion hog industry recently got a boost from government when the Department of Agriculture (DA), threw its support behind a program aimed at further improving hog production efficiency and productivity, hoping to lead towards increasing local pork supply and the capture of emerging global pork markets as well.

The program: "Send a Scholar ng Farmer" (SSFP), is spearheaded by the National Federation of Hog Farmers, Inc. (NFHFI) led by its Chairman, Nemesio G. Co. It aims to look into current best practices and available technologies, here and abroad, and to further lower their production costs and increase their farm yield.

In a statement signed Sept. 13 by then DA OIC and Undersecretary Edmund J. Sana, the premier agriculture body praised the NFHFI for being its reliable partner in the development and modernization of the country’s agriculture and fishery sectors, especially the swine industry.

The scholarship program, the statement continued, "is a recent move of the federation to invest in the education of Filipino farmers and their children. The Department has supported and continues to support the various initiatives of the federation since its founding in 1990, from improving industry productivity and the incomes of hog raisers, to providing the Filipino consumer with quality, affordable and safe pork."

The NFHFI will hold the projects’s kick-off with an extravanza on Dec. 9 at the Pavilion Hotel, coinciding with its resource-generation drive to help finance its programs. Industry partners and government leaders are expected to join the project kick-off to express solidarity with the hog farmers.

NFHFI president Albert R.T. Lim Jr. said: "through the SSFP, the federation will be able to provide "food for thought" to its chosen scholars, in particular, and to the farmers, in general.

We just hope the entire industry and its partners, would rally actively behind the SSFP, as the success impact of this endeavor will benefit, not only the country’s agriculture sector, but the country’s economy as a whole."