DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III (Contributed photo)
MANILA – The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) will give training to agrarian reform beneficiaries and communities on new farming methods and techniques to help them improve the quality of their crops and produce higher yields.
In a news release on Sunday, DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III said the department has launched intensive training for interested agrarian reform beneficiaries’ organizations (ARBOs).
He said that there are approximately 7,500 ARBOs nationwide that they are targeting to help in the government's food security program.
The DAR Support Services will be in coordination with the Agriculture Training Institute (ATI) under the Department of Agriculture (DA) in mobilizing different ARBOs nationwide to establish demonstration farms under the Farm Business School (FBS) project.
They will then evaluate the readiness of ARBOs to face the challenge of raising food productivity.
Lawyer Milagros Isabel Cristobal, DAR Undersecretary for Support Services, said the FBS is a long-standing project of the DAR where interested members of ARBOs undergo training on new farming methods to help them produce more and provide quality crops.
The demonstration farms will become model farms that may be visited by ARBOs and learn farming techniques that they may replicate in their respective areas.
“The idea here is to determine the technical capability and readiness of our ARBOs to develop demonstration farms where fellow, but less technically abled ARBOs can learn from,” Cristobal said.
She said DAR is targeting to convince at least one ARBO in every region all over the country to take the challenge and be among the pioneers of the program.
As a former Abono Partylist representative, Estrella expressed high respect for farmers and farmer’s organizations nationwide.
“They have long proven their dependability, by providing food to the people in areas critically affected by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Estrella said.
He added, “I should know because we worked with them to ensure the continued supply of food for our people when operations of the food manufacturing industry practically came to a halt during the pandemic”.
Estrella said one of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s directives was to maximize food production in the country. The President is the concurrent DA secretary. (PNA)
