MAHAPLAG, Leyte -- Nearly 100 residents in this town completed the season-long training on high-value crops production, a priority project of Leyte’s provincial government.
At least 63 residents in Palanogan village and 31 in Polahongon village became the new recipients of the local government’s “More Income in the Countryside Program (MIC-P)”.
MIC-P is a training course for compact farming of high-value vegetables and fruits intended for conflict-affected, poverty-stricken, and remote villages of the province.
The training course, which concluded Wednesday, lasted three months.
Selected participants learned the process of farming high-value crops and how to organize a farmers’ group, the first step for them to receive additional assistance from the local government.
Diego Domanging, president of the farmers’ association in Palanogan, expressed their gratitude to those who helped them gain new farming knowledge.
“This is a big opportunity for us to improve our living conditions as we were trained to produce high-value crops not for our neighborhood, but for big businesses,” Domanging said.
The group uses the vacant lot inside the Palanogan Elementary School to plant bottle gourd, eggplant, bitter gourd, squash, and watermelon, among others.
“We hope that this is not the last assistance that the government would give to us. The farming technique taught to us was very different from the farming practice that we were used to,” said Lito Tobise, Polahongon farmers’ association president.
The two organizations each received PHP5,000 as seed capital from the provincial government for starting a farmers cooperative, not to include other inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, and feeds for poultry and livestock.
“The assistance that we provided is not for us, but for the improvement of your family. You must continue to enrich your skills in farming by practicing what you have learned,” said Governor Leopoldo Dominico Petilla.
“We are here to guide you to ensure that your organization becomes successful, that your family condition would improve, and for you to be able to send your children to school,” Petilla added.
“But the most important, maintain the good and high quality of your harvest so that big stores would buy your products.”
After training on high-value crops, the farmers’ group will undergo training on livestock, honey, egg, oyster, and fish production.
As of this week, about 180 villages in Leyte are already part of the MIC-P and the provincial government is targeting to enroll 250 villages, with PHP2.5 billion in estimated earnings.
This target income, according to Petilla, will have a direct impact on the villages through improved economic
conditions and will also solve social problems, among them insurgency, criminality, and malnutrition.
Among the top performing barangays of MIC-P are Villaconzoilo in Jaro town, New Taligue in Abuyog, Hipusngo in Baybay City, and Villa Corazon in Burauen.
Petilla added that aside from training residents in Leyte, the MIC-P pool of trainers also extended technical assistance to farmers’ groups in Samar and Eastern Samar at the request of their respective local government units. (PNA)
