BAUKO, Mountain Province – Senator Cynthia Villar encouraged residents in this upland municipality to venture on farm tourism to be able to strike a balance between their economic activities and the efforts to preserve and protect the environment to help maintain the town’s decent state of the environment.
The senator was the guest of honor and speaker during the staging of the town’s Begnas di Bauko, one of the upcoming major crowd drawing events in the province.
Villar, who chairs the Senate committee on agriculture, said the Bauko has the potentials of being a must-see farm tourism destination because of the presence of vast tracks of vegetable farms in the different parts of the famous Mount Data plateau and that concerned government agencies and local governments must simply have to work together to synchronize their programs, projects and activities geared towards maximizing the potentials of the industry to become one of the town’s major economic driver.
She expressed her gratitude and congratulations to the municipal government led by Mayor Abraham B. Akilit and the different stakeholders for being to sustain the needed innovations in the annual conduct of the Begnas di Bauko festival which is now becoming one of the must-see festivals in the province.
At the same time, the senator also encouraged agriculture industry stakeholders to embrace the farm school program being undertaken by the government through the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) for them to be able to acquire whatever skills and knowledge that they could use to improve the production of agricultural crops and for their produce to command a higher price in the market.
Mayor Akilit claimed that the activities lined up for this year’s Begnas di Bauko festival are geared towards the efforts of concerned government agencies and the local government to preserve and protect the state of the environment which is the source of food so that the present and future generations of inhabitants could pass on the same to the future generations in good condition for them to be able to enjoy the presence of trees among other endemic plant and animal species.
Bauko plays host to a huge portion of the over 5,000-hectare Mount Data watershed that serves as the headwaters of 4 major river systems, Agno, Chico, Magat and Abra rivers, providing abundant water for domestic, irrigation, power generation among other uses.
Akilit has been known to be a staunch advocate for the preservation and protection of the environment having started his advocacy since he was still the regional director of the Cordillera office of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA-CAR) and even when he was a private citizen.
Despite the difficulty of having to inform and educate the people in the importance of preserving and protecting the town’s environment for the benefit of the present and future generations, the local chief executive underscored that he will still remain aggressive in imparting to the people the importance of maintain the greenery of the forests to allow the biodiversity of the watershed to be protected to ensure the substantial supply of water not only for the needs of the highlands but most especially those living in the lowland communities.
By HENT
