By Danny O. Calleja
PILI, Camarines Sur, (PNA) – First, it was Gulayan sa Paaralan to Gulayan sa Barangay, then to Gulayan sa Simbahan.
This time, it’s Gulayan sa Kampo that the Dept. of Agriculture is pursuing in Bicol for more vegetable production.
To start the program, 40 policemen and women from Philippine National Police’s Regional Public Safety Battalion and the Camarines Sur Provincial Police Office last week underwent a three-day training on vegetable production conducted by the DA’s Regional Field Unit 5 based here.
Abelardo Bragas, DA Bicol regional executive director, on Wednesday said the training, which was held at the CSPPO in Barangay Concepcion Grande, Naga City, is a joint project of the DA and Department of National Defense which was started at Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija last May.
This five-year nationwide project aims to turn idle lands in military camps into productive vegetable farms and a viable source of food.
Dr. Edgar Madrid, DA regional technical director for research and regulations, said similar trainings will also be conducted in other military camps to teach more men in uniform the technologies on vegetable production, particularly organic agriculture, and to promote appreciation of vegetable farming as a profitable undertaking.
Bragas said ensuring availability of vegetables as nutritious food in the region is made easy by the strong support of partner agencies such as the PNP.
“DA is very privileged to have the PNP as an ally in bringing food self-sufficiency to every Bicolano home,” he said.
In the training, Rosita Imperial, the DA’s Regional High Value Crops Development Program coordinator, emphasized the importance of vegetable which is a low input crop and very easy to propagate.
Going back to Bicol’s history, Imperial said the region has never attained sufficiency in vegetable and per capita vegetable consumption of Bicolanos is very low, which is the cause of diseases nowadays.
According to the World Health Organization, to avoid disease, a person must consume at least 140 kilogram of vegetable in a year.
Unfortunately, however, Bicolanos only consume 25-30 kilograms per year, Imperial said.
Vegetable production is also a good source of income.
With proper cultural management, a 1,000 square-meter area planted to vegetables can give profit that is equal or more than the income from a hectare of rice field, she said.
Imperial added that the DA is providing open-pollinated variety vegetable seeds for backyard vegetable production and hybrid variety seeds for commercial vegetable production to stabilize the prices of vegetable in the market.
Sr. Supt. Ramiro Mendenilla Bausa, the Camarines Sur provincial police director, said the gulayan project inside the police camp will be a clean and green showcase model.
He urged the policemen and women to impart their knowledge to local police stations.
“Let us now be an agent not only of public protection but also of vegetable seeds that we would be distributing for growing on backyards of our stations,” Bausa said.
He also vowed his full support to the Gulayan sa Kampo program, saying the PNP is not only for law enforcement but also for agriculture.
Bragas said that during the police vegetable gardening training, topics discussed include opportunities in vegetable production; cultural management of vegetables; weed management; vegetable seed production; and organic fertilizer production and application.
The DA-RFU also provided garden tools and seeds to training participants, Bragas added.