DAVAO CITY May 31 (PIA)-Two investors from the People’s Republic of China are looking for agricultural lands in Davao City as potential investment sites.
City Agriculturist Office Officer-In-Charge Leo Avila bared that the investors are looking at investing in vegetable, mangoes and fruit production.
Guesting at Marco Polo Davao’s Club 888 media forum last Wednesday (May 30) Avila said he accompanied the group to Waan, Mandug and Tigatto to scout for sites as the Chinese are interested in developing 100 hectares as vegetable areas.
Avila said the Chinese are planning to send agriculture technicians to study the viability of the area they will look at the soil type, water resource and other environmental factors.
The investors are also looking at mango production as Davao City has about 4,000 hectares of land planted to mango with only 2,000 hectares considered as commercially productive.
“Lots of mangoes were planted in the 1990s particularly in the upland areas, the growers only realize that it costs so much to make them productive.” Avila said. He added that many growers would just wait for the natural fruiting season to harvest their mangoes other farmers were just converted to other uses like banana plantations. According to estimates from the agriculturist office it takes as much as P7,000- P15,000 to make a mango tree productive.
It is estimated that the city has 400,000 mango trees totalled from an average of 100 mangoes in one hectare of land.
The Chinese investors are planning to set up a dried mango processing plant adding that the supply will come from Davao. Avila said that some of the famous Cebu dried mangoes were supplied by mangoes coming from Davao.
Dried mango has been a lucrative export shipment to countries such as China and South Korea. (PIA 11/RG Alama)
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