BACOLOD City – Championing intergenerational well-being for its residents, the Victorias City Government in Negros Occidental yesterday launched Project Victory to fight hunger and malnutrition.
The project is in partnership with AGREA Agricultural Systems International Inc.
“We want this [project] as a start of the new chapter of transforming food system which is partly an advocacy, an execution with better ways of doing it,” said Mayor Javier Miguel Benitez, adding that it will be a sustainable project as they are finding ways on how the community could help each other.
The city mayor also said that he is pushing to institutionalize the project by requesting the City Council to pass an ordinance on this.
The project’s target beneficiaries are the farmers and fisherfolk.
Data from the City Agriculture Office showed that more than 5,000 individual farmers and over 2,000 fisherfolk have been registered in their office.
For her part, Cherri Atilano, president and chief executive officer of AGREA Agricultural Systems International, said the project aims to provide income particularly to sugarcane farmers who have no income while waiting for the harvest season.
Through Project Victory, Atilano said sugarcane farmers, in particular, could engage in planting vegetables and poultry and hog raising as their other source of income.
Of the 14,392 hectares land area of Victorias City, 4,000 hectares are classified as agricultural land./PN
