Livestock industry deserves a bigger budget, says Villar

SENATOR Cynthia A. Villar, chair of the Senate committee on agriculture and food, assured participants of the Davao Agri Trade Expo (DATE) held in Davao City over the weekend, of a better budget for the livestock industry by 2018. “For a sector which had contributed 33% of the production of the entire agriculture, it is not fair for the livestock program to get a small percentage only of the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) budget at P1.2 billion or 2.7% of the department’s entire budget,” Ms. Villar said. The senator said she asked Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol during one of the budget deliberations to come up with a “better” budget for the livestock sector. “Budget should be commensurate to the revenue contribution of an industry. We must remember that the agriculture sector is not only about rice or vegetables,” she said. There are three main agriculture sector components: crops, which make up 50%; livestock, poultry, and dairy — 33%; and fisheries — 15%. This year’s DATE focused on livestock, hogs, poultry, gamefowl, and aquaculture. “We need to improve the livestock sector so that we can also improve the dairy industry, which at present, only produces 1% of our demand for milk and other dairy products,” Ms. Villar said. Meanwhile, Engr. Wilfred T. Teves, chair of DATE 2017 and vice-president for industry of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc., said this year’s expo was particularly significant for the concerned sectors in view of climate change and its effects as well as the recent bird flu contamination in Luzon.