FARMERS and household members from selected communities in three regions of the country will soon benefit from “sustainable and secure food sources” amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
They will be trained on basic farm management and crop production that they can apply in “communal and backyard farms” to be put up in Regions 1, 3 and 4A by the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development of the DOST-PCAARRD.
These farms will be covered by three projects under the agency’s Good Agri-Aqua Livelihood Initiatives toward National Goals (Galing) PCAARRD Kontra Covid-19 program.
These projects and their implementors are: “BIG-Panlaban sa Covid-19 Para sa Ilocos” of the Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU); “Going Back to Basic: Plant, Raise and Sustain the Chemical Pesticide-Free Integrated Backyard Farming” of the Bulacan Agricultural State College (BASC); and “Participatory Enhancement of Food Security in Laguna through S&T-based Home Garden Systems” of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB)
The virtual inception meeting, coordinated by the agency’s Crops Research Division, was attended by project team members from MMSU, BASC and UPLB; Ilocos Agriculture, Aquatic, and Natural Resources Research and Development Consortium, and DOST-PCAARRD officials and staff. Joel Norman R. Panganiban and Gabriel Paolo L. Peralta/S&T Media Services