‘Goat school’ boosts farmers’ livelihood opportunities

CAMILING, Tarlac — And now, a "goat school."

Formally called "Farmer Livestock School on Integrated Goat Management" (FLS-IGM), it has been boosting production of small ruminants in this town.

Introduced by the Tarlac College of Agriculture (TCA) here in 2006 in three Camiling barangays, the FLS-IGM has been gradually but consistently bringing about brighter livelihood opportunities for farmers.

Actually, the FLS-IGM, as a technology transfer morality, was launched in 2004 by the Los Baños-based Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), with TCA facilitators serving as participants in the training conducted in the same year.

The FLS-IGM was introduced in Camiling two years later through funds provided by the Department of Agriculture Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR) headed by Director Nicomedes P. Eleazar.

Under the modality, farmers are engaged in participatory technology validation and adaptation.

For six months, 38 farmers in Camiling met one day a week and were trained on integrated goat management, making them aware of practical alternatives to their traditional practices.

They went home after every class with an assignment — an activity which the farmers implemented in their respective farms.

The facilitators then developed a multiplier farm of upgraded goats at TCA, which served as source of stocks for the participating farmers and show window for the technologies on goat production.

The farmers were also assisted in organizing into a cooperative.

The TCA multiplier farm produced kids of the Native x Anglo Nubian, and Native x Boer bloodlines. Six months after the start of the FLS-IGM, the stocks at TCA have increased by 91 percent.

"This means that more stocks can be loaned to more farmers in the area," PCARRD’s Anna Marie Palacpac-Alo reported.

The farmers have also learned to house their goats and design their pens according to their resource endowments. The pens, which protected the animals from diseases and thieves, lessened goat mortalities by 80-100 percent.

Goat inventory in the village also increased by 77 percent in just seven months from the start of the livestock school.

"The project can now be expanded to cover other towns," PCARRD said.