Pangasinan farmers get P5-M worth of machinery, equipment

STA. MARIA, Pangasinan -- About 2,535 farmers in Pangasinan received PHP5.076 million worth of farm machinery and equipment from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) 1 (Ilocos region) on Friday.

Director of DAR-1, engineer Leandro Caymo, said in an interview Friday that the recipients were agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and non-ARBs from the six districts of the province.

Distributed to the farmers were five cultivator/tiller worth more than PHP1.3 million; 14 irrigation water pumps worth more than PHP1.2 million; one 4WD tractor worth more than PHP1.2 million; and five rice transplanters worth more than PHP1.1 million, Caymo said.

The distribution, he said, was made under the climate-resilient farm productivity support program and agrarian reform community connectivity and economic support services project.

“The farmers are given the machinery and equipment for them to adopt or be resilient to the effects of climate change, such as the El Niño phenomenon among others, as we also wanted to lower the cost of their production by farm mechanization equipment,” Caymo said.

The DAR, he said, is almost done in the distribution of lands among farmer-beneficiaries, hence it is now focusing on services and assistance to the ARBs.

“We only have 900 hectares left in Region 1 for distribution. Right now, we are into assisting our ARBs with legal needs and also with services to further enhance their production,” Caymo said.

In his speech before the farmers, he asked them to take care and make use of the machinery and equipment they have received from DAR.

Isidro Soriano, 71, a farmer, thanked the DAR for the grant.

“We are grateful because this will be a big help to us. It is really hard to find farm workers nowadays and it is also costly,” Soriano said. (PNA)