The Department of Agriculture and American firm Corteva Agriscience inaugurated the first of 80 planned rice and corn educational farms to be established in the Philippines.
The aim of this project is to help farmers boost productivity and profitability by creating educational farms or training centers to let the farmers adopt better agricultural practices and contribute to food security.
Training will be a season-long field and in-classroom training. The topics that will cover the training ranges from land and seed preparation, marketing and financial management, seed preparation and crop protection technologies.
Farm academies will cover 40 municipalities with a total of 50,000 hectares for rice and corn production, under the agreement signed last October 2019.
Agriculture Secretary William Dar and Corteva Agriscience recently opened Nueva Ecija Rice EduFarm in Barangay Homestead in Talavera in Nueva Ecija.
Under the Rice Tariffication law, the Department of Agriculture is promoting the use of high-quality seeds, among other good practices, to modernize and develop the local rice industry.
For his part, Corteva Agriscience country lead Arun Mittal said the EduFarms aim to raise crop productivity and improve farmer income.
“By planting high-yielding hybrid rice varieties and applying the corresponding crop protection treatments, farmers can lower costs, spend less time laboring in the field and improve productivity,” Mittal said.
The project will train 25,000 farmers which will generate additional food supply for 400,000 Filipinos and achieve additional production of 50,000 MT of rice.
The project will benefit 40 municipalities in the provinces of Nueva Ecija, Zamboanga del Sur, Pampanga, Lanao del Norte, Bataan, Kalinga, Tarlac, Cagayan, Pangasinan, Bulacan, Nueva Vizcaya, Laguna, Zambales, Quirino, Zamboanga Sibugay, Camarines Sur, Leyte, Negros Occidental, Iloilo, Capiz, Antique, Surigao de Sur, Bohol, and Occidental Mindoro.
Sources: philstar.com
Photo Sources: tvird.com.ph, da.gov.ph
