TRADE and commerce committee chair City Councilor George Goking is eyeing to put up cold storage in vegetables and fruits production' barangays in the city, Friday.
He said the storage facility answers farmers woes particularly on postharvest losses.
“Farmers in rural and remote barangays have been unable to preserve their produce due to a lack of cold storage facilities,” Goking said.
He said that even forcing farmers to sell at lower prices to middlemen and often getting lower than 50 percent of their actual value.
“Through the city's public and private partnership approach, such products can be preserved by constructing appropriate storage facility,” he said.
The agriculture sector in the city according to Goking has been suffering from high post-harvest losses.
“In high-value crop alone, the losses reported can easily reach 20-40 percent,” he said.
Goking also pointed out, however, that the challenge is to make the facility affordable and sustainable and to offer after-sales service, which should be a requisite for all agri-fishery equipment manufacturers, distributors, and service providers.
According to him, there is solar-powered cold storage facility that was recently introduced by the agriculture department, as it will be the first of its kind in the country today.
“It will have no additional cost for power expenses in storing their produce and can be easily installed in remote areas even without access to electricity,” Goking said.
He added the on-site cold storage facilities will help to build resilient Filipino farming communities in reducing food and income losses when natural disasters like typhoons, floods, and droughts occur.
“This is in some ways sustaining the city’s agricultural sec tor," said Goking
Goking said the City Council had enacted an ordinance that will help solve the problem through the Public and Private Partnership. (Ben Balce)
