With the holding of the 15th batch of “SM Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan Farmers Training” in Davao City, SM City allocated 5,000 sq. m. of land area in its property at the back of the mall to train residents here on technologies that will improve their vegetable farming.
Cristie S. Angeles, project director for outreach program of SM Foundation who led the launching of its 15th batch of “SM Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan Farmers Training” said about 130 farmers are participating in the 2nd batch training, the first was composed of 100 farmers held in a farmlot in Marilog, this city last year.
She said this project is to empower farmers through season-long training on improved and doable agricultural technology conducted by Harbest Agribusiness Corporation (HAC) in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture and the City Agriculture Office.
Actual training started on July 21, 2009 up to October 2009 where the trainees completed 12 sessions and their training was capped with a Harvest Festival of selling the vegetable that they grow at the SM mall area.
Arsenio Barcelona, president of HAC said their partnership with SM had already trained some 1,500 farmers that they conducted in the different parts of the country among them in Cebu, Benguet, Ilocos Sur, Batangas, Iloilo City and Pangasinan.
He said it is a step by step training where farmers are taught the proper way of growing vegetables that could produce not only more yield but quality crops.
He said they will grow the “pinakbet and chopseuy” varieties of vegetables namely squash, tomato, eggplant, onion, ampalaya, pechay, lettuce, cucumber, bell pepper, watermelon, etc.
The farmers are also taught commercial planting he said and this include giving them knowledge on management and marketing.
Barcelona said 80 percent of the fertilizer they use in the training are organic even as he said that they will also teach farmers the controlled use of pesticides. They will also be taught how to harvest the crops, he added.
Meanwhile Angeles said the farmer’s produce will be sold during the Harvest Festival also at SM grounds where a “tiange” will be set up.
She also said they are looking into how these trained farmers could move up into supplying the market of good quality vegetables. “We will be organizing them and find out how they could sustain the production,” she said.
Barcelona on the other hand said that 40 percent of the first batch of trainees in Davao are already into commercial vegetable farming and are now regular supplier to vegetable distributors of the city.
“Our objective really is to help these farmers bring these produce to the market in that way their quality of living would also improve,” he said.
