PH signs farm cooperation agreement with Papua New Guinea

The Philippines and the independent state of Papua New Guinea (PNG) have entered into an agricultural cooperation on Friday a year after President Duterte and PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill signed an agreement to develop the latter’s rice industry.

The cooperation will now allow Filipino companies to engage in agricultural projects in PNG, with many of them expected to focus on rice production.

In turn, the Philippines is hoping that PNG will reconsider its plans to ban the processing in the Philippines of tuna from its seas and increase the tax it imposes on Philippine fishing vessels to $2 million from between $200,000 and $400,00 annually.

As of 2013, there are 59 Filipino-owned fishing vessels that are licensed to operate in PNG.

Earlier this year, the country’s agriculture department established a rice model farm in PNG to help the latter cultivate its farm lands.

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said on his Facebook page that an official from PNG has already offered an initial 50,000 hectares (ha) of uncultivated land to be developed under the partnership, adding that as much as two million ha of land can be transformed into rice farms.

The Department of Agriculture earlier proposed to cultivate 100,000 ha of land in PNG. Depending on the efficiency of the program, that hectarage is expected to increase.

The agreement was signed in the middle of the demo farm on Friday, where 19 farmers from North Cotabato were deployed earlier this year to teach Papua New Guinea farmers how to develop their rice lands.

Piñol said the rice planted by Filipino farmers was now in the productive stage and were ready for harvest by the end of December.

The rice that will come from the demo farm will be absorbed by PNG’s market while the excess can be exported to the Philippines.

PNG is a country with 46 million ha of arable land and a small population of eight million. It imports about 300,000 to 400,000 metric tons of rice every year, mostly from Australia.