DA strengthens national veggie program for 300 Gawad Kalinga sites
The Department of Agriculture (DA) is strengthening the implementation of its national vegetable program in 300 housing sites of Gawad Kalinga (GK) in line with government efforts to ensure food security and generate additional livelihood opportunities for low-income families.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said these sites will be used as "research extension centers" that will encourage Filipino families to engage in backyard-based vegetable farming as a source of food and nutrition and as an income-generating activity.
He said the support of private sector groups such as Gawad Kalinga "is crucial in helping government achieve President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s goal of providing food on the table of every Filipino family."
Yap hopes that strengthening the government’s national vegetable program will help raise the per-capita commodity consumption from 30 kilos to 76 kilos a year.
Under this DA-GK joint program to promote vegetable farming, the DA will provide the seeds, technology and greenhouses, as well as help establish market linkages to the Gawad Kalinga sites to provide additional income for families living in these areas.
GK is best known for the houses it has built for the poorest of the poor across the country. It currently has 777 sites, of which 77 are field sites of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines-National Secretariat for Social Action (CBCP-NASSA).
The proponents of the DA-GK project 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.
The GK and DA agreed to initially concentrate on promoting food self-sufficiency through the DA slogan "Tanim Mo, Pagkain Mo" and GK’s slogan "No Idle Land, No Idle Hand."
Yap said the program would be carried out using the idle lots measuring about 10-15 square meters each between the GK houses.
At an average of 40 families for each of the 1,200 GK villages and five persons per family, around 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 (LGUs), and the nearby state university or college that can help provide training and technology transfer to guarantee the success of the program, he said. (PNA)