As the saying goes, old ways won’t open new doors.

Thus, in order to keep the opportunities coming, one has to be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. This also rings true for farming as a group of vegetable growers from Nasipit, Agusan del Norte recently realized after taking part in the implementation of a vegetable production technology demonstration.

The techno demo is one of the interventions of the Department of Agriculture (DA)- Caraga through the High Value Crops Development Program to vegetable farmers.

“The establishment of technology demo farms is an initiative of the DA to showcase new technologies in farming and teach the farmers for them to eventually adapt these technologies,” DA-Caraga HVCDP Coordinator Marco Antonio C. Morido said.

The abovementioned techno demo farm was implemented in coordination with the Local Government Unit of Nasipit through the Municipal Agricultural Office. It was established last September of this year with the Nasipit Vegetable Growers Association (NAVEGROWA) as the project cooperator. Among the vegetables planted in the 1,500 square meters area are eggplant, tomato, cucumber, pole sitao, and ampalaya.

Apart from technical assistance, the DA-Caraga provided the agricultural inputs that included seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and various farm tools that amounted to P100,000.

On December 9, the NAVEGROWA conducted a harvest festival. In his message, Agusan del Norte Provincial Agriculture Office HVCDP Coordinator Donato Alegado said that they are working on strengthening the vegetable industry in the province. “Hopefully, our vegetable supply will soon be sufficient for the needs of our province and even Caraga so that in the future, we won’t have to rely on the vegetables from other regions,” Alegado said.

Raquel Alaman, the President of the NAVEGROWA said that she is happy that their association was chosen to be the beneficiary of the techno demo since they learned a lot from it. “There is really a big difference with our old ways of farming compared to the modern ways that we learned from the techno demo. We realized that there are ways to minimize our production cost and still have a big production,” she said.

The commonly grown vegetables in the region are the lowland type and as per data from the DA-Caraga, in 2019, Caraga Region had a production of 24,699.54 metric tons with 2.01 kg per capita consumption. (vpsanchez)