DA Trains 1,800 Agri Technicians

By Business Mirror

The Department of Agriculture (DA) is training some 1,800 agricultural technicians at local government units (LGUs) before the year-end as part of efforts to teach farmers organic-fertilizer manufacturing and other environment-friendly farming practices.

Agriculture Training Institute (ATI) director Asterio Saliot said the DA’s attached agency has so far trained four batches of agricultural technicians who will serve as trainors in farmers’ field schools.

“Another 56 batches will be trained between now and the end of December to complete this year’s quota of 1,800 trainors,” said Saliot during the recent Management Committee (Mancom) meeting at the DA central office in Quezon City.

“The remaining 144 batches comprising 4,320 trainors will be trained starting March next year up to July 2009,” he said.

Saliot reported during the Mancom meeting that the ATI conducts its hands-on training workshops in its centers, as well as in the facilities of the DA and the LGUs all over the country.

“These agricultural technicians will serve as trainors to about half a million farmers in the 2,600 clusters or sites where the DA will channel a bulk of its funds for intervention measures in 2009,” Saliot said. “The training in farmers’ field schools will begin in December and will go on till October 2009.”

Besides providing training on organic-fertilizer manufacturing, he said the ATI is also teaches trainors on new technologies to boost the production of palay such as “Palay Check,” vegetables and root crops.

The 1,800 trainors will, in turn train 80,997 participants in farmers field schools during the December 2008-to- March 2009 dry-cropping season.

The DA is also training small farmers in 48 below-average, palay-producing provinces on how to produce their own organic-fertilizer needs starting next year.

In lieu of the fertilizer discount coupons that the DA has been giving out this year to farmer-beneficiaries in partnership with LGUs, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the DA will provide organic-fertilizer manufacturing support to farmers in 2,600 clusters or sites where the DA will channel a bulk of its funds for intervention measures in 2009.

Organic-fertilizer manufacturing support and other intervention measures will be channeled to these 2,600 clusters as a way to rapidly boost palay harvests by raising up to the national average of 3.8 MT—or higher—the per-hectare outputs in these relatively low-yielding provinces.

Click here to increase the palay and rice harvest, so the Philippines can be food sufficient.