‘Farming is empowering business,’ school exec tells students

MISAMIS ORIENTAL, Philippines – When classes opened at the Misamis Oriental State College of Agriculture and Technology (Moscat) in Claveria town this week, its student population was at 1,200 – the same number it had in the past academic year.

It had targetted to increase the number of enrollees to 1,300, but agriculture courses were apparently not attractive to young people, said Dr. Rosalito Quirino, the school president.

But if the national and local governments want to ensure food security and meet the challenges of climate change, Quirino said, they have to help make agriculture courses more attractive to college students.

“We need to let them (students) know that farming is a viable and lucrative livelihood. We need to show that farming is not for the poor, but it is an empowering business,” Quirino told members of the Regional Association of Government Communicators and the media on Tuesday, June 2.

Moscat is one of the best schools for agriculture in Northern Mindanao and one of only 3 schools in the Philippines that has an environmental engineering program. (The other two are the University fo the Philippines and the Western Mindanao State University in Zamboanga City.)

Yet in the last 4 years, Moscat has phased out 12 of its 18 academic programs to remain relevant and true to its mandate of developing agriculture education in the region.

“When I took the helm of this school, we had 18 courses with 1,200 students. We cried when we phased out 12 programs, it was a painful decision,” Quirino said.

Quirino lamented that roadmaps created by state universities and colleges that offer agriculture courses had been ineffective, while the National Agriculture and Fisheries Education System – aimed at modernizing agriculture and fisheries education from the elementary to tertiary levels – is inactive.

Shift in business model too

Former Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Robert Ansaldo said farmers considered themselves poor because of they are often victims of lack of government support and often marginalized. “We must put premium on the farmers.”

He also said there must be a shift in the business model in farming. To produce farmers, college students must be given an environment where they develop entrepreneurship and not just aim for corporate jobs.

Moscat has formed networks with schools abroad to access better technologies in agriculture and bring those technologies to the Philippines.

Quirino said the Center for Overseas Agriculture and International Development at the through Chungbuk National University, and the Korea National College of Agriculture and Fisheries, assisted Moscat in its mushroom development project.

Moscat is also awaiting accreditation with the New Zealand government for their dairy production and skills training programs.

Moscat is among the recipients of the NZ$5-million grant to develop dairy projects, Quirino said.

The graduates of Moscat are preferred candidates to work in the New Zealand dairy industry.

Maria Consuelo del Castillo, chief administrative officer of Moscat, said their program includes internship in Israel, where students can learn different technologies in addressing food production.

“You see, agriculture has a lot of future and we need to make agri an attractive course, so that our young people will gain an interest to venture into agriculture for the future of our country,” Quirino said.

Senator Grace Poe who was in Cagayan de Oro last week to also push for making farming attractive to young people.

“There is a need to urge and prod the youth to go back to farming and agriculture by providing scholarships programs for agri-related courses,” Poe said.

She has filed Senate Bill 2326 or the Integrated Urban Agriculture Act of 2014, and Senate Bill 2089 or the Corporate Farming Act, to ensure food security. – Rappler.com