MASAGANANG ISABELA

FOOD SECURITY PROGRAM FOR THE PROVINCE OF ISABELA

Isabela is the largest province in the country located in the north of Manila and part of the so called Cagayan Valley. Isabela is an agricultural province where most of its people are farmers and fisherfolks. Most of Isabela lands are arable and because of this, it is the leading producer of rice, corn and other agricultural crops.

Despite being an agricultural giant, the threat of food scarcity is still real as farmers continually threatened by climate change, calamities, costly farm inputs, lack of farm workers, rapid population growth, non-sustainable agricultural practices and many others.

Moreover, Isabela as the north’s food basket, it carries the responsibility of supplying food to other provinces in Luzon most especially in Metro Manila.

In order to realize its goals, TESDA Isabela will venture first on trainers training; thus it trained public school teachers under its Project TROPA TI SIGA. It is hoped that teachers who will received national certifications will become community trainers in order to reach out people and encourage them to embrace the culture of backyard gardening and animal raising.

In order to strengthen this, public schools in the province will be set-up as models of organic gardening and teachers become sources of knowledge about organic gardening.

The Department of Agriculture will be tapped to provide vegetable seeds and technical assistance to schools and to communities.

It is for this reason that TESDA Isabela conceived its flagship program for food security called MASAGANG ISABELA.

The program aims to strengthen the provinces’ food security by any way of making every Isabeleño family self-sufficient through maintaining an organic garden, backyard poultry and for piggery and the like.

The program is a conglomeration of efforts from various governmental agencies and even civic organizations with keen interest on food security.

As a preparation for the program, TESDA Isabela called on various government agencies covered with agricultural and food security, farm schools, state universities, farmers cooperatives and other stakeholders in a meeting last March 7, 2019 in order to craft the Isabela Agri-TVET plan 2019 - 2022 which aims to set the direction of agriculture through Technical-Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in the province of Isabela. The plan further desires to make Isabela the center of agriculture qualifications where all TESDA agriculture programs are offered in the province.

MASAGANANG ISABELA aims to come up with an integrated, intensified, responsive, collaborative and relevant agricultural trainings for the people of Isabela.

It seeks to make all Isabeleño families empowered with the needed knowledge, skills and attitude to maintain an organic and the domestication of animals.

As the Department of Education intensifies its School in a Garden (SIGA) and Gulayan sa Paaralan programs through conducting close supervision and monitoring the maintenance of an organic garden in the schools. The organic gardens in the school will then become the primary sources of food for DepEd’s feeding program. As pupils and teachers maintain an organic garden, it is hoped that the value of gardening be instilled into the young minds and gradually finds appreciation in agriculture and bring these values to the community where they live until they become mature individuals.

The Sangguniang Kabataan and League of the Barangay Captains are expected to support the programs. They are encouraged to monitor and supervise the implementation and serve as conduits of the people of the community to the different agencies on the government.

Isabela State University shall provide assistance to be community through its various extension programs. The university shall conduct assessment and evaluation in the implementation on the program and shall determine the needed support to the community. ISU shall also conduct research in the impact of the program, its implementation and identifying challenges and possible solutions. The university’s matured technology may also be brought to the community in order to enhance productivity.

The Department of Agriculture will provide technical and scientific assistance to the community. Likewise, the agency will assist communities through the provision of seeds and seedlings.

The Department of Trade and Industry will then train women and homemakers in order to make them entrepreneurs so that homemakers will benefit fully and help augment family income as their produce may be converted to marketable products through training and assistance from Department of Science and Technology and Isabela State University.

The Department of Labor and Employment may also provide starter livelihood kits to the homemakers.