SAINT BERNARD, Southern Leyte - The country's Department of Agriculture intends to revamp its agricultural sector, with particular emphasis on embracing digital agriculture. This strategy aims to empower farmers in making informed choices regarding the production and promotion of their goods. By adopting digital agriculture, numerous avenues for growth and advancement are made available to the farming community.
In line with this initiative, ATI-RTC 8 conducted another batch of the Digital Farmers Program 101 and 102 for farmers in Saint Bernard, Southern Leyte.
Farmers, some old in age, took on the challenge of getting to know modern practices in agriculture and online marketing. With the help of their youth counterparts, they learned different basic and advance agri apps that could be useful in their respective farms.
Most importantly, social media marketing of farm products was given emphasis so the participants can also try doing it with their products They created a social media marketing calendar so that they could prepare what content to post in their Facebook Pages. They also learned how to develop social media posters of their products to capture the attention of their potential online customers.
“I may be 65 years old but I still attended the training because I believe that a person's ability to learn has no limits.” explained Mr. Dioscoro Constantino, one of the participants. According to him, he never practiced using the smartphone because he thought that he was too old to use it. He also added that before, they would go around their neighborhood just to sell their products. “But because of what I learned here, I could just use the phone to sell them online.” He said that farming isn’t just about hard work. It must also come with knowledge. “Hard work without knowledge is useless.”
On the other hand, youth participant Ms. Mylien Labod was happy to assist in the training especially in the digitalization of services for Saint Bernard farmers. “When the youth and farmers work hand in hand, there will be an advancement in agriculture, not only in our individual pursuits as young farmers and the older ones.” she said. Mylien is also hopeful that there indeed would be an improvement in the agricultural sector of Saint Bernard.
A total of 22 farmers and youth participants attended the 3-day training on Digital Farmers Program 101 and 102 on August 9-11, 2023. The activity wouldn’t be made possible without the support of the Municipal Agriculture Office of Saint Bernard, and Resource Persons: Ms. Berlin Espenido, Ms. Esterlita Pagador, and Mr. Jayson Animas, trained trainers during the DFP 101 and 102 TOT held in 2022.
