Amulung's Aim for Corn Development

Amulung is a second class municipality in the province of Cagayan with a total corn area of over 6,200 hectares and almost 4,000 corn growers.

With its rich farming endeavors, the local government envisions Amulung to be the center of high-quality agricultural products in Luzon with sustainable, environment-friendly, and globally competitive corn produced by empowered stakeholders. To achieve this, Amulung is pushing further to improve its corn industry by attaining a five percent annual growth rate in production and increasing farmers’ income by five percent annually.

The local government’s strategies towards this include expanding the use of open pollinated variety and hybrid corn seeds and strengthening farmers’ organizations. Training, seminars, and capability-building activities were also held for stakeholders and the necessary facilities were provided through a counter-parting scheme.

Farmers were further capacitated through farm mechanization and post-harvest equipment. Monitoring of integrated pest and diseases was also put in place. The promotion of different interventions and cropping patterns was also implemented as corn production areas were being expanded.

In 2015 and 2016, strong typhoons greatly affected the corn industry of Amulung. To recover, they managed to distribute more than 4,780 bags of corn seeds as part of their rehabilitation program.

With these efforts, Amulung has consistently increased its average production yield from 2015 to 2018, winning the municipality major recognition from the Department of Agriculture for 2017 and 2018 in the National Quality Corn Achievers Awards. Also, more and more farms in the municipality have received certification for Good Agricultural Practices for corn including Corea’s Farm and Martinez Farm in 2018.

All these accomplishments point to how Amulung is working persistently to attain its vision and truly make corn farming a success.

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Extension services continue to evolve. With the challenges that extension workers and farmers face, the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) continues to explore various strategies to improve its efforts as the extension and training arm of the Department of Agriculture. In over 30 years, the ATI has celebrated various successes and learned from the lessons during hard times. Nonetheless, we are proud to be standing the test of time through the support of our partners and the clientele themselves. This is the ATI Today, more committed to bring you extension services beyond boundaries.