Juju M. Empuerto
CEBU CITY, June 18 (PIA) -- Over 6, 000 high-value coffee seedlings are
planted in around 12.1 hectares in San Pascual, Ubay Bohol under the
national greening program (NGP).
DENR-7 regional executive director Dr. Isabelo Montejo said the
NGP was envisioned not just a reforestation program but also to enhance food
production.
“Coffee is one crop that we can be self-sufficient by putting more
government inputs to local coffee farming through the national convergence
initiative (NCI),” Montejo added.
According to Montejo the effort to provide livelihood assistance
to the upland communities is the key to the success of the government’s NGP
with the inclusion of coffee as a high-value crop in keeping with the food
security objective of the program.
DENR has earmarked some 86T hectares for development into
coffee plantation under the greening program nationwide said DENR-7 Public
Information Office head Dr. Eddie Llamedo.
Llamedo added the department aims to establish over 4, 000
hectares of coffee plantation in various identified NGP sites in the four
provinces of Central Visayas.
NGP is carried out not only for regreening efforts but also
stability and productivity of watersheds, improved farm level productivity,
improved household incomes and increased production of food crops, timber and
non-timber forest products according to Llamedo.
NGP also seeks to plant 1.5B seedlings in 1.5M hectares of public
lands nationwide in six years, from 2011 to 2016.
This is more than twice the government’s accomplishment for the
past 25 years of about 730,000 hectares, bared Llamedo.
Areas for planting under the program include forestlands, mangrove
and protected areas, ancestral domains, civil and military reservations, urban
areas under the greening plan of local government units, inactive and abandoned
mine sites, and other suitable lands of the public domain. (mbcn/jsme/PIA7-Cebu/with
reports from DENR7)