ILOILO City – The Villar Sipag Farm School has opened its first branch outside Luzon located in Barangay San Jose, San Miquel town in Iloilo.
No less than Senator Cynthia Villar led the inauguration of the first Visayas branch farm school on Jan. 20.
The farm school is specifically for training the trainers on new farming technology and the trained trainers will also train farmers back in their respective towns.
They will be trained under the program Training of Trainers on Production of High-Quality Inbred Rice and Seeds and Farm Mechanization in coordination with the Agricultural Training Institute Regional Training Center-Western Visayas and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.
Trainees of the farm school are from the provinces of Iloilo, Capiz, Negros, Aklan, and Antique. Villar noted that they started to put up farm schools in Luzon four years ago –particularly one in Bulacan for central and northern Luzon and another one in Las Pinas for NCR, southern Luzon and Bicol.
After seeing the good effects of the schools, Villar said they decided to replicate it in Visayas and Mindanao.
“We perfected our courses and we also improved our farm schools and now, we want our focus in Visayas and Mindanao. We want a school for every town in the Philippines,” she added.
Villar said the training program for rice school is two weeks. They also plan to have crop school training program. The senator said the school is open for anybody who are representative of the local government units and cooperatives or owners of farm school.
“They can come here to learn, to be trained as trainors,” she said. But the Villar clarified that they will not accept ordinary farmers because they will also be eventually trained by those who will be trained at the farm schools back at their respective places./PN
