SENATOR Cynthia Villar has asked Department of Agriculture to make sure that its “Plant, Plant, Plant” program includes a training component in order to encourage more people to grow their own food.
Villar, chairperson of the Committee on Agriculture and Food, has been pushing for home gardening and urban agriculture as a food security strategy that will make sure people have sources of food in times of calamity or health emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For this program to be effective, we cannot just distribute seeds and let the people plant on their own. We should also have a program that will teach them the know-how of planting. The strategy is to let people see that growing food is a joyful undertaking by helping them make their planting projects thrive,” Villar said.
Villar said DA should tap the more than 20,000 farm schools all over the country to train the people how to plant. She said training programs like the Agri-crops production, which the Villar SIPAG Farm School conducts three times a year in partnership with the East West Seeds Foundation, will help people have a head start in planting vegetables.
