Victorias City stays sweet, green amid COVID-19

By Easter Anne Doza

 

Victorias City is more than just sugar, where one of the biggest sugar mills- Victorias Milling Company sits. It has also been awarded as the best organic Local Government Unit (LGU), thus earning the title – The Sweet Green City.

This northern city, a little over 30 kilometers away from the capital Bacolod City, boasts of its rolling and sloping terrains mostly of sugarcane fields.

This pandemic, Victorias City local government has concentrated on empowering local farmers to plant, in line with the Department of Agriculture’s Plant, Plant, Plant Program.

“This pandemic showed us that the world needs to rest from all the fertilizer and everything. We are producing so much in the world when we forget our people sometimes go hungry,” City Mayor Francis Frederick Palanca shared.

Farmers, agrarian reform beneficiaries, agricultural cooperatives and associations, even Boy Scouts were trained on organic farming and on methods where they can grow their own seeds.  They were given feeds and seedlings so they can do backyard gardening and grow their own food.

Climate plays a great part especially in the upper eastern portion of Victorias City which induces suitable environment for crops and other farm vegetables even farm animals while on the western coastal portion, the city is looking at Guimaras Strait on its 4,000-kilometer coastal area.

Along this 4,000-kilometer coast, around 1,000 mangroves were planted during the pandemic.

Just so balance won’t be destroyed, Palanca said the city is doing its best because before (pandemic), “we are tied up making money and sometimes our people go hungry. It’s a matter of reconstructing maybe on food security in one area and on tourism on the other.”

Since the lockdown and transportation at a halt, Victorias City made sure they produced their own food for the beneficiaries.

At the height of the pandemic, city officials went around the rural area to and use their crops and produce and sell it since there is no export nor import of produce to and from other provinces.

Recently, no less than Agriculture Secretary William Dar went to Victorias City at the Central Philippine State University (CPSU) -Victorias Campus to sign a memorandum of agreement Massive Cacao, Sweet Potato and Bamboo Propagation and Distribution worth P2-million, and another MOA on the “Bamboo Nursery Establishment Project” worth P500,000.

Dar challenged CPSU to integrate these agricultural ideas and innovations as the institution performs its core functions in research, instruction, production and extension while urging the University to strengthen engagements on projects that create rural industries like its current program on flour industry, muscovado industry, sericulture and its future project, the cacao industry.

According to the CPSU website, these programs will ensure sustainable livelihood and food security to farmers, as well as the economic development in the region. These are all in line with the current advocacy of the University, the Conservation Agriculture, that aims to preserve and improve soil fertility while increasing crop productivity.

Now, the city is staying green even in the pandemic time with dispersals of chicken, native pig and carabao while developing dairy for the city – this way they remain – The Sweet Green City. (PIA)