The Department of Agriculture in the (DA) Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) said “teaching” children, who are the hope of the nation, with the appropriate information concerning agriculture, will boost food sustainability.
“We are celebrating Children’s Month and we know how important the children are to the country that is why we invited you to visit us to that we can brief you where your food is coming from and how they are produced,” Dr. Aida Pagtan, focal person of the Gender and Development (GAD) program of the DA-CAR, told Grades 5 and 6 learners from Pinsao Elementary School during their site visit at the Bureau of Plant and Industry here on Thursday.
Pagtan, who is also a social worker, said children must be taught things they need to learn so that they can start to appreciate them at an early age.
“We thought that maybe by exposing them to agriculture while they are young, they will appreciate the food that is brought on the table and not waste the food because they saw how difficult the food was produced,” she said.
“More importantly, we hope that by exposing them to how food is produced, they will involve themselves in gardening to produce vegetables or taking care of food animals,” Pagtan explained.
The Philippine Statistics Authority said the average age of farmers in the country was previously at 57 years old, but the DA-CAR said more recent data of the Registry System for Basic Agriculture (RSBSA) in the region shows it has gone down to 45 years old.
Lawyer Jennilyn Dawayan, DA-Cordillera director, said they have programs to lure young people to engage in agriculture-related activities.
“The participants of the young farmers’ challenge is increasing and we are seeing more young people producing food or processing food for longer shelf life,” she said.
The “Gulayan sa Paaralan” program is also exposing children to farming.
Moreover, schools in all levels are forming the 4H (head, heart, hands and health) Club that entices young people to involve themselves in agriculture with the hope that they will hone their skills and practice the same or take up agriculture courses which has become “sexier” according to a professor of the Benguet State University with the addition of more skills leaning towards agricultural entrepreneurship.
Jovelita Bugtong, Grade 5 teacher at Pinsao Elementary School in Filipino said: “We bring the children to exposure activities for their exposure and allow them to see the beauty of agriculture so that they can apply it in the school to manage the green house and the ‘gulayan’ program. They can also apply it when they are at home.”
She said that they brought with them the Grades 5 and 6 learners who take up agriculture lessons in their subjects Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE) and Edukasyon Pangtahanan at Pangkabuhayan (EPP).
During the site visit, children were made to share what they learned such as “grafting” or producing planting materials from existing plants which can be adopted at the greenhouse provided by the DA at their school.
Another said he learned that sand could be used as soil to grow food so that they could easily be transplanted.
Another learner said it was her first time to see different varieties of tomatoes with different colors. (PNA)