NURTURING THE SOIL

We teachers should not only teach our children about communication and mathematics but also planting and nurturing the soil. These two factors go hand in hand. You just don’t plant seeds and just leave it there. The seeds will die without water and proper sunlight. You have to water it every day and apply manure and fertilizer to make the plant grow robust and healthy.

Children should be taught how to nurture the soil so they can become urban farmers at a very age. Raising their own food for the convenience of the family. We are all aware that prices of vegetables have skyrocketed in the commercial stratosphere. If our children know how to plant vegetables, then we can scrimp on our daily food budget. We can also teach them how to plant hybrid veggies which are now yielding that the local variety. Then we have enough food on the table and some cash from the surplus.

Agripeneurs are becoming younger and younger as years goes by. Children now are being taught how to operate or manage backyard farm. It is not called a garden because it is for commercial purposes. They are being taught how to plant white button mushrooms which are high yielding and fetch a very high price in the market. What’s so good about mushroom farming is that it only needs a small space to grow these edible and delicious mushrooms. Many have struck it rich planting mushrooms on backyard operation. We teach our children about backyard aquaculture, too. The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources are making the condotel units to public, which are actually fish tanks in three-tiered steel structure. Here you can raise catfish, mudfish, crayfish, ulang or fresh water lobster and red tilapia - a high value that fetch a very high price in the market.

--oOo— The author is Teacher II at Sindalan Elementary School