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Friday, March 29, 2024

Palawan turns to goat farming to fight poverty

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Puerto Princesa City—The Provincial Government of Palawan continuously promotes goat raising as an alternative livelihood to rural poor families in the province to improve their income and eventually free them up from the clasp of poverty.

Provincial Planning and Development Coordinator Ninfa B. Rubio said the livelihood enhancement project that primarily promotes goat raising will continue this year after a brief respite due to the election ban. 

Under the program, each poor family from the organized Grassroots People’s Organization receives P30,000 from the Gender and Development fund of the provincial government of Palawan.

“The dispersal starts with five female goats and a buck. The remaining money is used for goat shelter and for the member’s dues to their association,” the planning coordinator said.

As of 2019, the Provincial Government was able to organize 250 GPOs province-wide. Each GPO has 20 families as average members.

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The province’s planning chief added that in 2018 alone, their office awarded livelihood assistance to 400 poor families from the 21 GPOs, mostly in southern Palawan.

They are also distributing hybrid napier grass, as food substitute for goats, to farmer beneficiaries to ensure there will be enough food available for the livestock.

“This 2018-2019, we have obligated funds for 112 GPOs equivalent to 2,174 families amounting to P65 million-obligated,” said Rubio, also the Provincial GAD Focal Person.

“We’ve conducted an orientation if they wanted goat raising as their livelihood and most of them showed interest. So, most of our organized GPOs are into goat raising” she said.

An inventory of the rural poor was conducted before they’ve come up with the goat raising project, which she said has a big market in the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines (BIMP) – East ASEAN Growth Area. 

“The purpose of the inventory of the rural poor is to determine where and who the poor are. After determining where they are, we organize them into GPOs for our livelihood intervention,” Rubio explained.

To ensure the success of the project, the Provincial Planning and Development Office continuously monitors the progress of the program among beneficiaries.

The goat raising livelihood initiative is aimed at bringing down poverty incidence in the province pegged at 52 percent (2017-2018), to the national average of 25 percent. The provincial government is confident that this initiative will help in achieving the target, along with other livelihood programs that have been implemented such as seaweeds farming, cacao production, and coconut program. 

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