Farmers of Panglima Mastul benefits worth P42.43 million Farm to Market Road

TAWI-TAWI – The farmers and the residents of Barangay Panglima Mastul will now benefit from the concreted 4 kilometers of Farm to Market Road (FMR) after the Regional Project Coordination Office of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao finally turned over to the Municipal Local Government Unit of Simunul.

On September 26, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Agrarian Reform Mohammad S. Yacob, Ph.D., Deputy Project Director Ammal D. Solaiman, JD led the turnover ceremony worth P42.43 million FMR.

The Simunul is one of the top cassava producing Municipality in the province of Tawi-Tawi, particularly in Panglima Mastul, it has a fertile soil and is suited for planting cassava, but due to inaccessible roads, cassava farmers in the said Barangay suffered from rough and muddy roads; it was tough for them to get to their farms, especially during rainy seasons.

Hard roads discouraged them from farming because most of their products were damaged due to the inaccessible transportation of the crops harvested from their farm to the market.

When the Philippine Rural Development Project started the Concreting of Panglima Mastul Farm to Market Road in 2018, many farmers began to see hope that their rough road would finally be replaced with a concreted one.

This project will benefit more or less 4,958 individual beneficiaries or 720 households. Farms would be more accessible, and crop harvest would be easier to transport.

Indeed, concreating this road eases not only the burden of farmers from product transportation, but also opens economic opportunities and brings a brighter future for their children.