THE Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPA) and Central Philippine State University (CPSU) in Kabankalan City are eyeing a partnership for an additional of at least 500-hectare organic farm in Negros Occidental.
Provincial Agriculturist Japhet Masculino said he initially discussed with CPSU-Kabankalan president Aladino Moraca a scheme that will help scale up the local organic agriculture industry.
Masculino said they will utilize the parents of the students, who are recipients of the P20,000 per semester incentives from the national government.
"These students are actually children of beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps). Instead of giving them directly their allowances, we are looking at utilizing the fund for organic farming whether livestock or crops," he added.
According to Moraca, the CPSU-Kabankalan currently has more than 1,000 student-recipients of the program of which 90 percent of them are children of farmers.
The fund is pegged at about P52 million, he told Masculino.
Under the scheme, the parents will plant in their respective farms utilizing the allowances of their children for inputs like fertilizer.
Masculino said this intervention will ensure that the incentives given by the government are being put to good use.
This is also seen as a contribution to expanding the organic agriculture areas in the province, Masculino said.
"Once realized, the scheme will result in an additional 500 hectares of organic farms," he said. He added that, "Even if we can initially convert at least 200 hectares, it would still be a good start."
The OPA and CPSU-Kabankalan are currently working on finalizing the scheme, which is targeted to start during the second cropping season this year.
It can be recalled that the provincial government is now stepping up the efforts in scaling up its organic agriculture industry.
Considered as the country's leader in terms of organic agriculture, Negros Occidental currently has 17,000 organic farming practitioners with about 16,000 hectares of farms devoted to organic production.