TABUK CITY, Kalinga – In preparation for the upcoming Matagoan Festival, the Office of the City Agricultural Services (OfCAS) conducted a consultation with the city’s 43 barangays regarding the activities planned for Farmer’s Day on June 25.
The discussion included activities like the official program, parade, and indigenous games. Games including sack races, tug-of-war, palosebo, coconut grating, rice pounding, and kadang-kadang are among those that have been planned. The winners of the different games will be receiving prizes.
The finest raw and processed goods from every barangay will also be featured in the agri-booths.
The budget for this year’s Matagoan Festival Farmer’s Day is PhP500,000, up from last year’s PhP200,000, according to OfCAS Officer Lim Ducyogen. The amount will pay for the event’s prizes and food.
Meanwhile, stressing the city’s position as the agricultural bastion of the Cordillera and its goal to become a SMART CITY, City Public Information Officer Aurora Amilig urged local farmers to support and grow the city’s agricultural economy and register with the iFarm system.
To support the city’s agri-tourism initiatives, she encouraged every barangay to highlight their abundant agricultural goods in their festivals and register the same with the tourism office for official recognition.
In line with food security and production in the city, Amilig urged farmers to practice intercropping techniques to ensure continuous agricultural production. She also informed the group about the plan to consider the cultivation of bamboo propagation and production by the city as a possible new source of income for farmers.
Moreover, OfCAS presented the preliminary results of geotagged agricultural data, noting that some data still needs to be validated and that other data is still being processed. Perfecto Pagtud of OfCAS and owner of Perfecto Farms said the geotagging process will be repeated for farmers whose farms were geotagged but whose names are not in the list.
OfCAS also encouraged farmers to submit their planting and harvest records as a basis for assessing damages during disasters. This is in line with the Department of Agriculture’s request that farmers submit truthful and precise accounts of their damaged crops.
Currently, there are 12, 788 local farmers registered to the city’s Farmers Information Monitoring System, according to OfCAS.
Enrique Baliang and Napoleon Ayang-ang, representatives of Mayor Darwin Estrañero, were also present during the consultation. By Rod Asurin
