MOTIVATED by the success of a student farmer who earned P60 thousand from a 500 sguare meter watermelon patch he grew while enrolled at a farmers’ training program, Catigbian farmers now troop to get into a Farmers’ Field School (FFS) program the local government is implementing.
Mayor Roberto Salinas said it’s is just sad they had to turn down some of the applicants.
For the town aiming to be a green haven of progress and development, the FFS alone develops a minimum of 13,500 sq meters of lots with the 27 farmers now starting FFS.
“Initially, it was hard to convince farmers to join, perhaps because they have been unsuccessful in the past,” Salinas confessed in an interview.
“But with the considerable success we had, we felt sorry to turn down some applicants now,” he admitted. “But limiting the participants allow the technicians handling the program better personal supervision,” he continued.
Cognizant now of miracle in modern farming, farmers have trooped to get in line with the second batch to get new technology.
Salinas said the Department of Agrarian Reform in tandem with the Department of Agriculture through the Provincial Agriculture Office introduced the project.
“The project brings down technology by training local farmers the modern farming techniques, let them adopt practices and help market their produce,” he explained.
With East-West Seed Company, Catigbian gets the company’s best agri-technician supervisors, best seeds and the latest farming technologies.
The technology itself is worth the money, Salinas assured.
Farmers from 22 barangays present a minimum of 500 square meters or a maximum of 1000 square meters of farm to be eligible for the program.
Aside from the best seeds, farmers get inputs on the kind of soil, mitigations for production and basically what to do with their farms.
The company also loans P6,000 which the farmers repay from their harvests, Salinas added.
By December, the mayor expects to harvest their second batch produce. He has also accordingly asked the town council to buy the products make sure that their farmers get the money they were promised. (rachiu/PIA)
