CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY — A boom in local chicken and egg production helped keep food on the table in Northern Mindanao last year, cushioning the blow from a small drop in meat supply caused by farm diseases.
Overall livestock production—which includes pork, beef, and goat meat—fell 1.5% to 269,807 metric tons in 2025. On the flip side, local poultry farms stepped up, growing by 4.2% to produce 275,691 metric tons of chicken and duck products.
Outbreaks hit hog farms the slide in red meat was mostly triggered by ongoing battles with animal diseases, particularly African Swine Fever (ASF), which continued to disrupt local pig farms.
Pork, which makes up nearly 80% of the region’s entire meat supply, took the biggest hit—dropping 2.0% down to 213,987 metric tons.
Here is how other farm animals fared:
Goats: Experienced the biggest percentage drop, down 4.4% to 6,743 metric tons.
Cattle: Slipped slightly by 0.3% to 37,789 metric tons.
Carabao: Bucked the trend, rising 5.3% to 11,288 metric tons.
Chicken and Eggs Pick Up the Slack With pork supplies tight, poultry farmers helped fill the gap. Chicken production jumped almost 5% to 192,451 metric tons, while local egg production grew 3.3% to reach over 78,000 metric tons. Duck meat and duck egg output, however, both suffered minor drops.
What this means for your shopping basket to keep meat prices stable and protect public markets from supply shortages, the Department of Agriculture (DA) is stepping in with practical solutions:
Help for Farmers: Setting up local breeding sites for pigs, cows, and goats to help small farmers restock their herds with healthy animals.
Cheaper Food Access: Expanding direct-from-farm KADIWA markets and cold storage hubs to cut out middleman markups and bring cheaper eggs and meat to local communities.
Better Health Checks: Boosting farm disease tracking to stop outbreaks before they hit neighborhood market stalls.
The goal? To help local farms fully bounce back and reach more than 1.1 million healthy farm animals in the region by 2027.
