SCIENCE CITY OF MUÑOZ, Nueva Ecija — At least 24 agricultural extension workers from different parts of the country, including Luzon and Visayas areas, are reporting to their respective works on Monday with new skills to partake to more trainors.
This after they finished a four-day specialized training course on the mechanization of rice crop establishment at the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PhilMech) here where they underwent extensive training on the use of machinery developed for the purposes planting rice.
Dr. Baldwin Jallorina, PhilMech’s Director, said the trainors would bring home to their respective provinces the knowledge they acquired in the training.
The trainors graduated last Friday with Sen. Cynthia Villar, chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food served as the guest of honor.
Jane Diacoma, technical staff of the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) in North Cotabato believes she had enough stuff now to echo to her fellow trainors and farmers that could help uplift the rice production efficiency.
“We learned a lot on how to use the different machines, especially with the rice transplanter which is now easier to do compared to the manual that we were doing before,” Diacoma said.
But Jallorina said it was only the first module.
There will be another training course for harvest and other processes in rice production.
Villar, meanwhile, hailed both the ATI and PhilMech for the training program which “strengthened the technical capability of the participants on land preparation, seedling preparation and mechanical transplanting, among others.”
“As we all know, it is through mechanization and the use of modern farm technologies, that farmers can lower their operation cost, lessen postharvest losses, improve quality, increase their profit and overall, to boost rice production,” she said.
Villar also underscored her support in incorporating research and development (R&D) in the agriculture sector which is parallel in improving agricultural mechanization efforts.
“Even the National Economic Development Authority has acknowledged that we need to invest in R&D to fast-track the growth and development of the agriculture sector, which is crucial for an agricultural country like the Philippines where two-thirds of the population is directly involved in agriculture,” Villar added. (Marilyn Galang/PNA)
