When a US-educated young man becomes the governor of his province, expect him to do a business-like approach in developing agriculture and fisheries in his territory. Just like Mohammad Khalid Q. Dimaporo, 29, who became Lanao del Norte’s youngest governor two years ago.

Mohammad finished a masteral degree in international development economics from the University of San Francisco and had also enrolled for his PhD in agricultural economics at the Texas A & M, one of the most prestigious universities in the US. He can be expected, therefore, to focus on the development of agriculture and fisheries, considering his educational background.

Lanao is a resource-rich province but a lot has to be done to develop them to give the people a decent source of livelihood. What are his projects?

After assessing the strong and weak points of his province, he saw the potentials of putting up a mariculture park in Moro Gulf, particularly in Sultan Naga Dimaporo town (formerly Karomatan). There, with the collaboration of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, a 700-hectare mariculture park was launched with the initial installation of two commercial cages for bangus culture. They will also grow other high-value species. The production is financed by the government. He first wants to show that such a project could be profitable and that will encourage private investors to come in.

The mariculture park has a section for small-scale fisherfolk who don’t have big capital to invest. Here BFAR is helping them to undertake less-capital intensive projects such as raising oysters, sea urchin, seaweed and abalone. These are high-value marine products.

Another important project that the young governor has started is the establishment of a grains processing center with the help of the Department of Agriculture. The National Agribusiness Corporation is helping the province in putting up a P60-million corn processing center. For rice, the province is investing P15 million for dryers, ricemills and other facilities.P30-60 million for the project with a provincial counterpart of P120 million loaned from the Municipal Development Fund Office. Now in its nursery stage, the jatropha project aims to plant at least 1,000 hectares in the interior areas of the province not used for food production.

The grains processing center, according to Dimaporo, will empower the farmers. He pointed out that Lanao del Norte is a big producer of rice and corn but lacks processing facilities. He said that traders from other provinces go to buy the newly harvested rice and corn from his province because there are not enough processing facilities.

The grains processing center could serve as a clearing house. Production of these cereals could be consolidated for more efficient marketing.

The province is also investing in alternative fuel production involving jatropha and coconut. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has committed

Lanao del Norte is a big producer of coconuts and part of the harvest could be allocated to biofuel production. Right now the Philippine Coconut Authority is also introducing high-yielding varieties for planting in the province to augment production.

Meanwhile the agriculture projects initiated by his father, Congressman Abdulla Dimaporo, continue. One of them is a big dairy project of more than 2,000 milk animals from New Zealand. The milk produced is currently used in the milk feeding program of the Department of Education.