A June 9 article of this paper talked about Cong. Chiquiting Sagarbarria’s intention to focus on food production. A laudable idea.
According to that article, the legislator will propose laws that will provide incentives for farmers to till the land. He further highlights the situation of our own farmers who are confronted with very high costs of production compared to farmers in Vietnam and China.
In that article, the Congressman also expressed his intention to source funds in Congress to construct more farm-to-market roads so that farmers can easily sell their produce themselves and not through middle men. While this isn’t original, still, it’s another praiseworthy idea worth doing.
At the end of the article, the good congressman hinted that we are “nearing a critical shortage of farmers” indicating that if we don’t do anything now, we will all starve ourselves to death.
He is right. We need to do something with our dwindling number of farmers.
This brings me to an old proposal made by a local businessman, Ernesto Quiamco, who offered the free use of a portion of his nearby farm to help instill a love for farming among students. He even assured them of marketing support for their produce (http://dumaguetemetropost.com/bizman-offers-lot-to-teach-pupils-farm-life-p10531-422.htm).
I am just wondering if anyone has seriously considered his offer. If nobody has utilized his proposal until now, then I guess, it’s about time that somebody takes his offer. This idea of attracting young people to love agriculture, develop an attachment to the environment, to learn how to plant or learn how to farm is something we need today before it’s too late. Unless of course, it’s OK for us not to have farmers or it’s OK for us to have nothing to eat.
People need to understand the value of agriculture in our future. That is why we need to infuse in our children a mindset that cultivates the love of farming or planting. Mr. Quiamco’s offer is an offer that must really be considered, in fact, it should not be rejected or ignored.
As a longtime resident of Dumaguete and as a native Negrense, I am hoping that the local government will continue its efforts to teach residents how to make organic fertilizers out of kitchen wastes, to meticulously carry out regulations that will prevent the conversion of agricultural land to residential or commercial land areas, to continue on planting climate-change resistant crops so that people are guaranteed of sufficient food even in the midst of the detrimental impacts of climate change, to increase initiatives that could develop the farmer field schools, expand on its ‘high-value crops’ program, and to continue promoting the plow-now-pay later scheme that can maximize agricultural area development.
More than anything else, let us emulate what Mr. Quiamco has done — encourage young people to consider a future in the field of agriculture if we really want to focus on food production.
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