Govt strengthens vegetable program by encouraging farming, consumption

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines will strengthen its national vegetable program by encouraging vegetable farming and consumption through a partnership with an organization that helps build homes for poor families. To be undertaken by the Department of Agriculture (DA) and Gawad Kalinga, the initiative plans to raise vegetable consumption per person from “30 kilos to 76 kilos a year," DA Secretary Arthur C. Yap said in a statement. Under the joint program, the DA “will provide the seeds, technology and greenhouses, as well as help establish market linkages" to 300 Gawad Kalinga sites. Besides providing additional income for poor families living in GK sites, these sites “will also be used as research extension centers that will encourage Filipino families to engage in backyard-based vegetable farming," the statement said. The program would be carried out using the idle lots measuring about 10-15 square meters each between the GK houses under a food self-sufficiency initiative. At an average of 40 families for each of the 1,200 GK villages and five persons per family, 240,000 GK residents will be able to provide for their own nutritional needs, according to GK data. For every GK village, a food security point person will be designated who will team up with the appropriate counterpart point persons from the DA, local government units, and the nearby state university or college that can help provide training and technology transfer to guarantee the success of the program. Proponents of the DA-GK project have recently explored the possibility of including livestock raising, backyard fish ponds, fruit-bearing trees, medicinal plants, waste segregation, water systems and training and technology transfer in this initiative. “We have 60 research centers, while the LGUs (local government units) have their own sites. What we had to do is to bring technology and basic food production to the ground with partners, because the national government cannot do it alone," Yap said during a GK event last year at the Fort Bonifacio complex in Taguig. Of Gawad Kalinga’s current 777 sites, 77 are field sites of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines-National Secretariat for Social Action (CBCP-NASSA). - GMANews.TV