Villar’s comments on DA’s use of budget ‘a wakeup call’ —Dar

Comments made by Senator Cynthia Villar regarding the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) penchant for funding research instead of directly helping farmers is “a wake-up call for the department on how to make research the farmers, Agriculture Secretary William Dar said Friday.

The senator has criticized the DA for allocating of a huge chunk of its 2020 proposed budget to research instead of actual assistance to farmers.

“Bakit parang lahat ng inyong budget puro research? Baliw na baliw kayo sa research. Aanhin ninyo ba ‘yung research?” said Villar, chair of the Senate Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform Committee.

“Ako, matalino akong tao, pero hindi ko maintindihan ‘yang research niyo, lalo na ‘'yung farmer. Gusto ba ng farmer ang research? Hindi ba gusto nila tulungan niyo sila?” Villar said.

Speaking at a memorandum of understanding signing with Corteva Agriscience for the establishment of education farms for farmers’ training, Dar said, “For those who are allergic to the use of the word research, maybe it would be good for us to use the word innovation this time around. Because that’s broader, anyway, than research.”

Dar’s statement drew laughter from some in the audience.

However, Villar’s comment served as a “wake-up call” for the department, Dar noted.

“It’s good that our consciousness have been aroused by the budget hearings because that’s where we really need to move forward in terms of utilizing the outputs of research going to the farmers’ fields in scale,” the Cabinet official noted.

“I like what happened in the senate because it’s a wake-up call for the whole Department of Agriculture to embrace utilization of technologies—very important to increasing productivity, and as well, profitability of the farmers,” Dar added.

He assured farmers that more support will be forthcoming.

“Yes, we take the challenge to see to it that we do research that would be good for development. And from here on, we take the challenge to move the outputs to the farms,” he said.

The memo signed by Dar and Corteva officials is meant to educate and train thousands of farmers to produce rice and corn from more than 50,000 hectares of land to meet the requirements of 400,000 people.

Farra Siregar, Corteva’s ASEAN managing director, said the will put up 80 education farms in 40 municipalities nationwide.

“In ASEAN and in this year in the Philippines, in a region that calls rice the food staple, we all have a duty to work together to enable our farmers so that they can safeguard our rice production from ever increasing challenges,” Siregar noted.

“We have climate change, we have labor and water constraint, we have aging farmers population and we have increases in diseases, pest and wheat pressures,” he added. —VDS, GMA News