BAGUIO CITY – The city legislative body approved a resolution requesting the city government to recognize a number of city barangays that displayed ingenuity, innovation and self-reliance in establishing their survival community gardens or household container gardens during the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and the prevailing general community quarantine (GCQ).
The council, in the said resolution, pointed out the city government needs to provide incentives in whatever form to the barangays for their ingenious and innovative survival community gardens or household container gardens that allowed the residents to be self-sufficient in the production of their food at the height of the ECQ and during the GCQ where movement of the people is still restricted.
City legislators disclosed that border closures, quarantines and supply chain and trade disruptions are restricting people’s access to sufficient and nutritious sources of food during the Corona virus Disease (COVID) outbreak.
Further, the council stipulated that clearly the COVID global pandemic is reportedly unfolding at a critical juncture in the national’s and the city’s history but in the face of such gargantuan crisis, residents in the city’s barangays have reached out to find ingenious ways of rising to the challenge posed by the enforced closure of business establishments that caused unemployment among thousands of workers.
According to the council, foremost example of the innovations of the residents and the barangays is the establishment and creation of survival community gardens and household container gardens in most of the barangays, a simple yet expedient means of mitigating the impact of the pandemic to the economic activities and sources of livelihood of the people and across the food system.
The city legislative body asserted that to distinguish the status of the city’s barangays, the city government, through the City Veterinary and Agriculture Office, should conduct an extensive search for the ingenious and innovative survival community gardens and household container gardens in the barangays.
The council also requested the concerned offices and the Liga ng mga Barangay–Baguio City chapter to formulate the guidelines, criteria and the program components to the search taking into consideration the utmost objectives and purpose of the said activity which is the mitigation of the pandemic’s impacts across the food system, especially in the smallest political subdivision.
The city government had been distributing assorted vegetable seeds to the residents in the different barangays to allow them to put up their own survival gardens within their premises as part of the efforts to raise part of their food supply following the ECQ and GCQ implementation to contain the spread of the contagious virus in the city.
One of the major programs of the city government is the aggressive promotion of urban gardening among the city’s populace that will serve as a source of food and attraction in the city’s barangays.
By Dexter A. See
