With the NCOV scare beginning to lift, the shipments of bananas and other fruits to china re beginning to normalize. With this realization, the demand for tropical fruits may increase in China, Russia, Japan a and South Korea in order for them to stave off future viral outbreaks by building physical immunity.
This has become an opportunity for many of our tropical fruits and their producers. I am sure many companies are taking advantage of this and moving to ramp up production and ease logistics to enable a higher volume of exports.
How can we boost this further?
Perhaps it is therefore time to ask the Civil Aviation Authority or the Davao International Airport Authority to immediately build a food export facility at the Davao international Airport to allow our producers to ship out even quick small quantities of seafood, fruits and meats to meet the demand of the Chinese, Singapore and Japanese markets, as well as the increasing demand of the Visayas and Luzon markets.
Moreover, perhaps the regional office of the department of agriculture can assist in this endeavor to design it in a manner compliant with international standards. It is time for this to take shape.
Having this facility will be a boost for our fruit producers, many of which source their products from lower income regions, thereby creating new income streams for our farmers.
We must all remember that sustaining Mindanao’s 7% growth will depend on ho well our agriculture sector, particularly the food production sector performs, since higher production theoretically will lead to stable if not lower food prices, keeping living costs low and economies competititive.
As this sector represents about a third of total growth in the region and Mindanao, it is also where majority of our poor residents derive their livelihood. Boosting agriculture cuts poverty and makes our economy more robust and inclusive. Developing our agriculture sector increases household incomes and makes us an even more attractive market.
These two characteristics, the low food prices, and lowered poverty will allow our growth to rise even further, since lower costs allow more reinvestment, and lower poverty means a larger middle class, an expanded market, and opportunities in it for our producers, farmers and what have you.
This means a strong local market is present, and enables us to sustain our growth, especially in the era of disruption, when viruses hamper trade, and recently, have caused short term lows in global stock markets.
