TACLOBAN CITY, Leyte - “Although it would be a challenge for us trainers to teach these innovations and implement the DAC program to our farmers, I think it all needs adjustment on our part”, said Zaldy Ador as he looks forward to the tasks set ahead of him during the closing program of the Digital Agriculture Course for RCEF in Tacloban City. This and many more experiences and challenges were probably in the minds of most of the participants during the said activity.
Indeed, technology and innovations are pretty much hard to live with especially for farmers who haven’t used technology at all. Much more for farm school trainers to teach technology to farmers who are hesitant and uninterested to utilize technology in the first place. With the Digital Agriculture Course, ATI-RTC 8 aims to capacitate trainers with the techniques and strategies in presenting digital agriculture to rice farmers that could benefit them in numerous ways.
Twenty-five (25) farm trainers from different farm schools in Eastern Visayas participated in the Digital Agriculture Course for RCEF on July 13-15, 2022 at Hotel Estrella in Tacloban City, Leyte.
During the training, participants learned about the anatomy of a digital farmer. This is important as this will be the overall goal of the trainers to encourage their farmers to become digitally literate and technologically ready when it comes to farming. Through the various modules in the course, they also learned strategies on how to present and deal with farmers, especially in the use of smartphones and their features, the power of the internet, and the apps that are beneficial to their farms.
They also learned how to present their products online which is one of the major highlights of the DAC program, online marketing. Through Canva, trainers designed online posters that could improve their social media marketing skills.
Despite the big challenge Zaldy has foreseen when they will be the ones conducting DAC in their farm school, Bibar’s Farm, he was still thankful to have been part of the training and the assistance given to them. “Almost everything was provided to us,” he said. They were provided with packages of learning/training materials that ATI has prepared for them as these will be very useful for their farmer-level DAC.
“I personally am not inclined with the new technology and other online things especially since it’s difficult to catch network signal on our farm.” shared Jennylyn Carao, a farm trainer from Fidel Cabale Integrated Farm School. “This exposure for me had a great impact as it showed me new trends and techniques in digital agriculture. Although it is a challenge for me to relay this to other farmers or students, I think with this DAC program, I must bring with me a huge amount of patience.” she added.
After all the learning and exposure, participants then shared how they will apply their knowledge through a micro-teaching workshop. Each farm school was provided with a topic and was tasked to present the topic effectively and strategically. This will encourage the exchange of new techniques and strategies in sharing digital agriculture among the farm trainers. By the end of the training, participants planned for their conduct of the farmer-level DAC in their respective farm schools.
