Author: Raffy Rico

The Philippines may start raising organic chicken on a commercial scale, following the go signal for Philippine poultry exports from the government of South Korea. This was announced by Agriculture Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol during a meeting with Ambassador Kim Jae Shin. “We can now sell our chicken products to them since the facilities of the San Miguel Corporation have already been approved and the Province of Maguindanao has started the “Halal” chicken production. “The chicken can be raised, using commercial rearing facilities, but the feeds are totally organic,” he said. The all-natural feeds will be formulated by an Islamic engineer, so the products comply with Halal standards,” he added.  During the meeting Piñol also thanked the South Korean government for providing market for other Philippine agricultural commodities such as bananas and pineapples, sourced primarily in Mindanao. “Investments in Philippine agriculture is very important as it enables us to be competitive with other ASEAN countries, he explained. “We cannot compete with Vietnam and Thailand in terms of production if the government does not give adequate support,” he added. The Agri chief told the Korean ambassador that with the help of technical personnel he is positive that the country will achieve self-sufficiency in rice in three years. Just recently, Piñol visited IRRI in Los Baños, Laguna where the country’s top rice farmers, together with rice experts from PhilRice and IRRI, DA...