BAGUIO CITY – The conduct of the City Coordination Meeting between the Department of Agriculture Cordillera (DA-CAR) together with its attached agencies, the city government, and farmer’s cooperative and associations (FCAs) in Baguio continue to strengthen collaborative efforts that assist city farmers through specific initiatives to help improve their production and livelihood.
In the City Coordination Meeting initiated by the Baguio City Agriculture Program Coordinating Office (APCO) held at DA-CAR on August 29, 2024, Regional Executive Director Atty. Jennilyn Dawayan explained the importance of coordination meetings being done not only in Baguio City but in the six provinces of the Cordillera region as a venue for the FCAs to come up with suggestions to the agriculture department and the local government units (LGUs) that they consider as a timely initiative to improve production.
“We want to strengthen coordination with the LGUs through this kind of dialogue and this activity, we hope that the participants can identify how many registered farmer’s cooperative and associations or FCAs there are in Baguio City, how many are civil society organizations accredited, are there farm tourism circuits in the city, and can these FCAs consolidate and form into a cluster to create a farm tourism circuit,” Dawayan said.
Participants of the city coordination meeting were briefed on the objective of the activity focused on a review of the department’s programs and projects, identifying solutions to implementation challenges, and strategizing for impactful initiatives for 2025, which served as groundwork for the participants in coming up with outputs based on their workshop.
Aside from the recommendation of the Regional Executive Director, the participants were encouraged to identify possible learning sites for accreditation by the Agriculture Training Institute (ATI), Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) farm schools, identifying the need of each association through consolidation, the active participation of the city as a National Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Program (NUPAP) beneficiary, and the showcasing of urban practices identified with the city.
The cities of Baguio and Tabuk in Kalinga are among the areas identified for NUPAP, a new banner program that seeks to achieve food accessibility and availability, alternative sources of livelihood through mass production, build climate-resilient and sustainable urban agriculture technologies, promote food safety for urban and peri-urban farming, rehabilitate communities through urban farming, minimize logistics costs by producing local food, and the collaboration with LGUs, national government agencies, international organizations, private sectors, social enterprises, marginal groups and other interested stakeholders. By JTLlanes
