Sen. Villar urges farm schools to get accredited by TESDA

A little over one in five farm schools in the country are accredited by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), which grants P12,000 to each small farmer who will take enrichment classes on farming, Senator Cynthia Villar said Wednesday.

Two hundred of the 920 farm schools listed in a directory published by Villar’s nonprofit organization have linked up with TESDA, and the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food, which she chairs, is “teaching” farmers and farm owners who own farming schools to also get accredited, Villar told GMA News Online.

The P12,000-scholarship grant covers three months of courses on growing and harvesting crops, raising livestock, and farming business.

TESDA allocates P750 million a year to the project, which could be accessed by accredited farm schools.

“In effect, the private farm will earn from it, so it will be sustainable, kasi kung walang earnings yung magfafarm school eh ‘di nila matutuloy. Kahit maliit, sustainable,” she said in an interview on the sidelines of the launch of a partnership between lawmakers and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

A farm school per town

The senator aspires to have a farm school in each town catering to the needs of poor farmers.

“I’m not targeting the rich, corporate farms and all that, parang pang-individual, and then murang model,” she said.

“Gusto ko ‘yung model na pang-mahirap,” she said, saying her initiative also teaches farmers to grow their own animal feed.

Villar owns two farm schools, one in Las Piñas and another in Bulacan, which serve as models to others interested in establishing their own. She said they also teach trainers who could train farmers.

A farm school is located within a farm and operates as an on-the-job training facility, where farmers learn to actually grow crops, she said.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that there were 11.29 million Filipinos working in the agriculture sector, or a third of the labor force, in 2015. The number reflected a steady decline since 2011.

In 2011, Senator Francis Pangilinan warned that ageing farmers and unattractive wages in the sector were a threat to food security in the country. — VDS, GMA News