Farmers urged to join farm school bandwagon

MANGALDAN, Pangasinan — Sen. Cynthia Villar has urged farmers to join the farm tourism bandwagon and at the same time turn their places into farm schools.

Villar, who came here recently to attend the birthday celebration of mayoralty candidate Marilyn Lambino, wife of Sec. Raul Lambino who is the presidential adviser for Northern Luzon and administrator of Cagayan Economic Zone Authority, said that in 2014, she passed the Farm Tourism Law as part of her advocacy to help farmers, fishermen and their children.

In 2015, Villar said 380 farms applied to become farm schools. The number increased to 900 in 2016. In 2017, the number continued to rise to 1,320. 

This year, Villar said there are 1,855 farms applying to become farm schools under the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

“Once accredited, you become an agricultural-vocational school under TESDA,” Villar said.

TESDA will pay the tuition of students enrolled in farm schools with a maximun number of 25 students per class.

“If you maintain 25 students for a month, every month you get paid P100,000  and  you will be paid P1.2 million a year for only a one-hectare farm  for this purpose,” she added.

The teachers and the modules to be used must be TESDA-accredited.

Meanwhile, Villar said the Senate is set to pass this year the rice competitiveness enhancement fund to give P10 billion a year to rice farmers to mechanize and to develop good seeds.

Those smuggling rice to the Philippines get rice from Vietnam because palay per kilo in that country is P6 while the amount is double at P12 in the Philippines. Their price is cheaper because they are mechanized and have better seeds, according to the senator.

“So we have to teach our farmers how to produce these in-bred seeds that will grow your production from four metric tons to six MT per hectare,” Villar said.

The senators are trying to pass this year the coconut farmer and industry development law so that the coco levy fund can be distributed to farmers.