MECO chairman Angelito Banayo (right) and OPAV Secretary Michael Llyod Dino (left) welcome Cebu City farmers during the May 5 launch of the farmers training held in Barangay Buot./Contributed Photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines – The office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas in partnership with Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) launched the “Vegetable Farm Season-Long Training for Cebu Farmers” in Barangay Buot, Cebu City last May 5.
This partnership aims to train farmers from the mountain barangays of Cebu City to harvest more produce for them to earn more.
Selected farmers from the mountain barangays of Buot, Pung-ol, Bonbon and Babag in Cebu City will also be made undergo training with the use of the latest technology from Ministry of Agriculture in Taiwan.
Present during the launching were MECO chairman and resident representative Angelito “Lito” Banayo and OPAV Secretary Michael Lloyd Dino.
Banayo said that at first, he was unaware that there are Cebu City residents who earn from tilting the land.
When he knew about it, he immediately asked the Ministry of Agriculture in Taiwan to share its farming practices to Cebuano farmers.
A team from the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute together with their technicians will visit Cebu next month to give a farmers training to Cebu City farmers.
Both the farmers and MECO decided to start their training on June 18 in anticipation of the start of the rainy season and to make sure that water supply will be made available for their use.
The training will run for six weeks and farmers will have one session per week.
Secretary Dino, for his part, thanked MECO and the Ministry of Agriculture in Taiwan for extending its help to the Cebuanos.
“This is the start of helping our farmers boost their means of income, we can extend this to the other parts in the Visayas once we see success here in Cebu City,” said Dino./dcb