Villar empowers smallholders thru SIPAG farm schools

With the advocacy to lift farmers and fisherfolks from poverty, Sen. Cynthia Villar established farm schools that offer free training opportunities on courses designed to improve agricultural productivity.

Two farm schools were set up through Villar Social Institute for Poverty Alleviation and Governance (Villar SIPAG) in Las Piñas City-Bacoor, Cavite and in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan.

Trainings and lectures comprise crop farming (vegetable farming, mushroom and sweet corn production), fisheries and aquaculture, farm business school (financial literacy and profitability, selling and marketing, farm tourist site accreditation and farm visits) and other farm trainings (honeybee keeping, green charcoal briquetting technology, bamboo propagation, plantation establishment and harvesting; forage management, orchid cultivation and cutflower production, organic farming and vermiculture composting).

The schools are using school desks made of recycled plastics, the same chairs that Villar donated to public schools all over the country.

Allied Botanical, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, University of the Philippines – Los Baños, Macondray Plastics, Bureau of Animal Industry, Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, East-West Seeds, Sygenta Philippines and the Philippine Horticultural Society will share their expertise and knowledge during the entire course of the program.

Approximately 2,500 students have already graduated from the farm schools of San Jose del Monte Bulacan and Las Piñas – Bacoor.

The Villar Sipag Farm School launched Sagip Bukas in October 2016 where drug surenderers from Las Piñas learn about farming during a 12 week community-based drug rehabilitation training program.

The courses are offered for free and students take home some free seeds and other implements which they are expected to utilize at home or in their respective areas where they can make agriculture a profitable investment.

Villar, who heads the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food, believes that a key solution to ensure the country’s food security is to support small farmers.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 80 percent of the food consumed globally comes from small farms. Unfortunately farms are left in forlorn as the young generation would go to cities and other urban areas to find work because of the meager income.

Recent data showed farmers earn only P150 a day or P4,500 a month, way below the poverty threshold of P5,000 a month.

Villar underscored the need to give incentives to small farmers to catch up with 1.5 million people estimated to be involved in family farming in over 500 million small farms worldwide.

For this reason, Villar believes that there should be more farming schools or farm tourism camps all over the country as a venue for higher learning for many farmers.

Since the enactment of Republic Act 10816 or the Farm Tourism Development Act, the number of farmers, farm owners and farming communities that enjoy the benefits of converting their farms into tourist destinations has grown significantly.

Villar recently launched a directory of these farms to serve as reference guide to enthusiasts, interested trainees and tourists.

“It is our hope that the directory will be useful in spreading the word about the joys of farming and its potential to lift people out of poverty,” Villar said.

“Increasing the number of venues for agriculture-related training will also help remove the barriers that prevent Filipino farmers and fisherfolks to have more income and be more competitive, which are lack of technology, mechanization, financial literacy, and inability to access cheap credit,” she added.