A total of 124 vegetable backyard farmers finished a three-month training of the Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan Farmers Training Program of SM Foundation Inc., yesterday.

Cristie Angeles, assistant vice president of SM Foundation Inc., said that the training program is aimed at teaching farmers modern agricultural technology for high value crops.

Angeles said they want to make farmers entrepreneurs and business-minded people who are equipped to produce quality and safe vegetables.

Though SM never promised to be a ready-market for their produce, she said, farmers must be committed to providing sustainable supply to any market and to assure this, they have to group themselves together.

“We are always open to embrace them but they have to be sustainable and they must grow together,” Angeles added.

SM president Henry Sy also commissioned Harbest Agribusiness Corporation to lead the training at the Lux Mundi Farm School in Brgy. Blumintritt, Murcia, Negros Occidental, she said .

Arsenio Barcelona, president of Harbest Agri Corp., who was at the graduation, of the farmers also said they taught the participants farming technologies that can increase their production without expanding their land and those that require low production cost but result to high output.

Barcelona said farmers also learned to make their own fertilizer using organic materials for the soil to be more productive, adding that many do not know that putting too much fertilizer will degrade the soil which will affect crop production.

The training does not only teach technologies but it also inculcates a sense of responsibility in farmers in growing their crops and to learn its business aspect, he added.

Harbest is a nationwide company based in Pasig with branches in Davao and Pangasinan. *LTG

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