Last year, the region produced 1.087 million MTs of corn.
For the past two years, the country’s corn king has been Cagayan Valley with a production of 1.302 million MTs as of this writing this year and 1.223 million MTs in 2006.
At third place is Northern Mindanao with 1.039 million MTs so far this year, up from its previous 943,205 MTs.
Southwestern Mindanao, however, was the country’s top corn producer in 2005 with its 965,921 MTs, then followed by Northern Mindanao with 935,352 MTs. Cagayan Valley was only third then at 769,506 MTs.
This year’s 3.6-percent increase in corn production in Southwestern Mindanao, said Zaldy Boloron, the Department of Agriculture’s corn coordinator in the region, was partly due to the establishment of three government-run modern corn post harvest facilities and trading centers. The post harvest and trading centers are located in the towns of Kabacan in North Cotabato, Banga in South Cotabato and Malungon in Sarangani.
He said that as a result, there were 2,700 MTs more of corn production due to the reduction of post harvest losses, thus raking in P2.4 million more in income for the farmers.
The country’s corn production this year amounted to 6.739 MTs, with 3.75 MTs (or 55.7 percent) coming from Mindanao, according to BAS.
Aside from the two Mindanao regions already cited, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) produced 883,748 MTs of corn; Davao region, 355,394 MTs; Zamboanga peninsula, 220,377 MTs; and CARAGA region, 128,792 MTs.
There were no details yet for this year’s corn production by province. But previous data showed that South Cotabato yielded 452,299 MTs of corn in 2006 and 384,191 MTs in 2005. North Cotabato had a corn harvest of 332,425 MTs in 2006, up 14.32 percent from 2005’s 290,793 MTs.
Sultan Kudarat came in third in 2006 at 162,842 MTs, down 7.03 percent from the previous year’s 175,147 MTs.
Sarangani also suffered a 27.13-percent decline in 2006 to 76,476 MTs from 104,951 MTs in 2005. (MindaNews)
