rt vol. 7, no. 3 giving farming a chance
TRANSCRIPT
7/31/2019 RT Vol. 7, No. 3 Giving farming a chance
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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.
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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
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