Local farmers expressed support for Tony Pellegrino\u2019s plan to establish a cargo airline, Cargo Air Bridge, saying that the project will help the agriculture industry in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council chair Ramon B. Camacho praised Pellegrino on Friday \u201cfor taking action\u201d to help farmers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis cargo [airline] will address the issue of expensive freight cost, which hampers farmers in shipping their produce within the CNMI and to Guam,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
With the CNMI\u2019s economic situation, Camacho said that venturing into farming will be beneficial for the entire community.<\/p>\n
Sabalu Farmers Market president Isidoro T. Cabrera said he supports Pellegrino\u2019s CAB venture \u201c100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI personally will be investing my money there and purchase stocks,\u201d he said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n
According to Cabrera, the presence of a cargo airline company will increase agricultural production of local farmers as they can now market and sell their commodities to other islands.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we\u2019re very limited. We\u2019re only producing for our domestic market,\u201d he told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
With the high cost of freight, Cabrera said CAB is a venture that is \u201cvery attractive and beneficial\u201d and is \u201csomething that local farmers have been waiting for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause Mr. Pellegrino has the resources and capability, he\u2019s putting up his money to help revive our agriculture industry. It will improve our economy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
[B]Farmers co-op, educational process[\/B]<\/p>\n
Camacho said that with a cargo airline in the horizon, a farmers\u2019 cooperative is more imperative now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you work on exporting agricultural products, you talk about consistency. \u2026If we put this in a concept of a co-op, then the co-op will handle everything for the farmers,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Camacho said the farmers\u2019 support group, composed of the council, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and the Northern Marianas College-Cooperative Research Extension and Education Services, will be meeting to discuss the prospects of a farmers\u2019 co-op.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re waiting for a land designation where we can build the co-op but I talked to Tony who said he has an available property in Garapan. We\u2019re going to look into it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cabrera, who is the agriculture consultant of NMC-CREES, said the program will be involved in the educational process on the farmers\u2019 side. This process includes the teaching farmers the variety of produce they need to grow and standardized packaging for all products.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to know the demands of our buyers and consumers. We have to know what they want,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Local farmers expressed support for Tony Pellegrino\u2019s plan to establish a cargo airline, Cargo Air Bridge, saying that the project will help the agriculture industry in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}