A processing center and storage facility with solar dryer has now finished construction in Barangay Ablang Sapang, Moncada, Tarlac, as part of the province’s proposed enterprise supporting sweet potato. The intervention is funded and implemented under the Department of Agriculture’s Philippine Rural Development Project and will benefit the 179 farmer-members of the Sapang Primary Multi-Purpose Cooperative.

The warehouse and storage facility will serve as a site for consolidating, chipping, drying, and storing dried sweet potato chips. It will also house equipment such as chipping machinery and mechanical dryer during the rainy season.

Meanwhile, the multi-purpose drying pavement will be used hand in hand with the mechanical dryer to dry chipped sweet potatoes. Sweet potato is eyed as a commodity gaining an increased role in rural development as raw material for many industrial applications.

The enterprise will make money by selling the consolidated chips to San Miguel Foods, Inc. as a more economical alternative ingredient for aquaculture and livestock feeds.

The 512-square meter project has a total project cost of P12,247,933.71, 80% of which came from loan proceeds from the World Bank, 10% from the Government of the Philippines (GOP) and the remaining 10% from the Local Government Unit of Tarlac.

Aside from these infrastructures, the enterprise will also provide trading capital, transportation facilities, tractors, mechanical dryer, and other equipment to increase the income of farmers through increased production of dried sweet potato chips supplied to San Miguel Foods, Inc.

In support to this intervention, a 14.7 kilometer farm-to-market road is now under construction to benefit farmers and locals in barangays Capaoayan, Banaoang and Ablang Sapang.

A Custom Service Micro Enterprise Project in the same municipality amounting to P979,000 is also completed. (Kayla Arceo, PSO InfoACE)