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Rice Today  July-September 2008

Giving arming a

Story by Meg Mondoñedo and photos by Jose Raymond Panaligan

A youth feld school in the Philippines trains young students in rice arming andagriculture in the hope o perpetuating the nation’s dying breed o armers

and decision making among rice

stakeholders through information-

and-communication-based

technology promotion a nd delivery

systems,” better known as t he

PhilRice-IRRI Cyber Village project.The project, which star ted in

2006 and is scheduled to nish in

2008, tests and develops approaches

that deal with the ra nge of problems

faced by farmers. It then takes these

approaches and makes them more

widely known at the village and

municipal levels through the u se of 

information and

communication

technology (ICT).

The project also

looks into the

effectiveness of 

computer-based

information

and knowledge

dissemination

to rural farmers

and extension

workers

(who take technology andtraining to farmers).

In In fanta, one of the project’s

pilot sites, the YFS was an off-shoot

of ICDAI’s long-running program, the

Farmers’ Field School, which started

in the 1980s. In t hese schools, a team

of agriculturists and farmer-tra iners

gave training courses and workshops

on ecological pest m anagement,

integrated soil ma nagement, livestock 

training, and other agricultural

services in villages and towns

upon request of organized farmer

groups. The Farmers’ Field School

was a tremendous success; however,

through th e years, fewer and fewer

farmers at tended, so ICDAI developed

anot her stra tegy—the Youth FieldSchool—wherein the tr ansfer of 

agricultural technology was delivered

not to farmers but to their children.

“Seventy percent of the

population of Infanta is below 21

yea

are

on

an

ch

Fa

“T

tau

old

wi

it—

the

bu

wonder in appreciatingof life: its food and agri

“We wanted to start

early in agriculture,” he

“so the Grade 6 student

‘Wow! Farming is a glo

We are connected natio

internationally!’ We wa

see that agriculture is n

their own far ms, it’s a g

These children do not e

how many people in the

rice. Hopefully, with the

would want to become f

Che-Che Mori lla, he

sustainable agriculture

which handles t he YFS

“We just want the stude

appreciate the farming alove the farmers, t heir p

are farmers. We are also

that these students a re

teaching their families.

become very good exten

chance

“Farmers ar e getting older

and older. When they are

gone, who will produce

the food? Few farmers

today want their children to become

farmers or even agriculturists.

The farmer will just say: there is

no future in this for my child.”

In 200 7, ICDAI, in par tnership

with the Philippine Rice Research

Institute (PhilRice) and the

International Rice Research

Institute (IRRI), launched the

Youth Field Scho ol (YFS) as part

of the PhilRice-IRRI project on

“Improving knowledge exchange

This is the bleak r eality, as

explained by Father Francis B.

Lucas, president of the Infanta

Integrated Commun ity Development

Assistance, Inc. (ICDAI), a

community-based nongovernmenta l

organization (NGO) in Infanta, in

the Philippine province of Quezon.

24 Rice Today July-September 2008

HigH scHool students h B

i sh Q, Phpp,

m h- x

p mm h h’ py.

cHe-cHe Morilla, h icd

b p

FatHer Francis lucas,p ii cmmydpm a,i., k b hb  h Yh F sh.

70% of Infanta's

population is below

21 years old. Why

are we teaching only

the farmers and not

their children?

7/31/2019 RT Vol. 7, No. 3 Giving farming a chance

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Rice Today July-September 2008

effective trainers for their families.”

Ms. Morilla says that because

students also learn how to

use the Rice Knowledge Bank 

(RKB)—IRRI’s digital rep ository

of information on rice production

(www.knowledgebank.irri.org)—

they are becoming the conduits of 

information to their farmer-parents.

The connection between

the PhilRice-IRRI Cyber Village

project and the YFS lies in theuse of the RKB as the source of 

computer-based information and

knowledge dissemination. In

Infanta, however, students, not just

farmers, are given direct access

to agricultural information.

The YFS was incorporated

into students’ regular subjects and

graded just like, say, math ematics

or science. On Thursdays, YFS

facilitators, composed of ICDAI staff 

members and farm er-volunteers,

teach the young students about

growing rice, managing pests and

diseases, using the RKB, and man y

other aspects of growing rice.

To the happy surprise

of ICDAI staff members, thestudents enjoyed the eld school

subjects so much that th ey began

attending school more often.

“My co-teachers and I were

very pleased to see the impact of the

YFS on the lives of our students,”

relates Eva Crisostomo, teacher and

guidance counselor at the Binulasan

Integrated School in Infanta, an

ICDAI pilot school for the YFS. “They

 went to the eld, they cleaned, they 

planted, and they were very eager

to learn. Normally, our classes do

not have full attendance, but, every

Thursday, the rooms are full!”

Ludie Ligutan, a volunteer

YFS facilitator and a farmer

herself, explains that ICDAI

gives her m aterials with which

to teach a par ticular topic, suchas seed health management

or sustainable agriculture.

“I try to make the classroom

lessons interesting by making jokes

and telling stories,” says Ms. Ligutan,

“but once its time to go out into the

eld, the students are uncontrollable!

They dive into the

mud and start

identifying the

insects and

memorizing

their names.

They prefer

hands-on

exercises to lectures, they like seeing

how the lessons are applied in the

actual eld.”

For the students, the rewards

come in the discovery that they

can make a real difference

to their families’ lives.

“The YFS has helped me a lot

because my father is a farmer,”

says Sheena Orozco, a high-school

student at Binulasan. “I tell him

 whatever I learn from the eld, likehow and when to apply fertilizer,

and which are the harmful insects

and which are t he good ones.”

Her classmates are quick to agree.

“We really learn a lot!” enthuses

Kristell Barrival. “Whenever my

parents have a question, I

look it up in the RKB

and I know the

answers are there.”

The YFS

helps not only the

students learn

about rice farming

and agriculture

but also their

parents.

“Sometimes there are

parents who don’t listen to the

field lectures,” says Ms. Ligutan,

“but their children listen, and

at home, when it’s their own

children who tell them about the

lessons, they listen and learn.”Alvin Romantiko, also a high-

school student in Binulasan, sums

it up perfectly. “Since they started

with the YFS, they’ve taught us a

lot,” he says. “We learned about

rice and vegetables, but rice

was the most important to me. I

realized that if all of us became

successful engineers, lawyers, or I T

specialists, then who would plant

rice: who will feed us? If we allthink of becoming professionals,

then who will become farmers?

Everybody needs to eat. Even the

most successful businessmen and

scientists need to eat. W

make sure there is food

and everything else will

It is encouraging to

these students are givin

a chance, helping to les

worry that farming willendangered profession.

many challenges remai

According to Father

lot of poor people are vi

industrialization. “Whe

come in, people get suck

their centers,” he says. “

that happens, the envir

neglected—the basis of

production is neglected

when you remove the fa

sell the land, hoping to h

children study anything

agriculture. At the end o

though, they lose: they d

land and they don’t hav

nobody can break the cy

Breaking this cycleYFS aims to achieve. By

school students in farm

agriculture early on, you

learn about the importa

food, and, more specic

importance of rice in th

millions not in only in t

but also around the wor

26 Rice Today  July-September 2008

eva crisostoMo, h 

 

B i

sh.

ludie ligutan, m Yh

F sh , by h f,

whh h h m h p. B

m mk mh h h

h .

HigH scHool students irri’ r Kw

Bk m b p h

B i sh’ mp m, whh

h b 20 mp.

Quizzes in tHe Field p h

 Yh F sh pm. s

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