Pangasinan farmers celebrate with a new farm tractor from DAR
AGUILAR, Pangasinan—Famers here are happy to start the year with expectations of bountiful harvests after the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) turned over a 4-wheel drive tractor to the farmer-members of Sitio Mapita High Value Crop Growers Association (SMHVCGA), Inc.
Just this week, half a dozen men crowd around a bright orange farm tractor as a mechanic and farm machinery operator teach them the basics of using a rotovator. The members of the SMHVCGA will soon become full-fledged operators who will lead this community-based farm machinery rental enterprise in their sitio.
The men then take turns in operating their organization's tractor, motivated to begin the year with an enterprise that will be the first in Mapita.
DAR Assistant Regional Director Ma. Anna Francisco, who is also the Provincial Agrarian Reform Program Officer of Pangasinan said 50 members of the cooperative will directly benefit from the farm tractor.
“The tractor would not only increase their farm production, but it would also add income to their cooperative,” Francisco said.
“Higher farm yields would help increase the cooperative’s income, which would eventually contribute to ensuring enough food supply in the community,” Francisco added.
On that same day, the cooperative led a simple thanksgiving rite under the sturdy roof of a shelter that they constructed to house the farm tractor that they had received from the DAR.
The SMHVCGA, Inc. is one of the five agrarian reform beneficiary organizations in Pangasinan that each received a 4-wheel drive farm tractor under the DAR's Climate-Resilient Farm Productivity Support (CRFPS) project. Members who are agrarian reform beneficiaries also received a unit of stainless knapsack sprayer, high-germination-rate seeds, insecticides, and fertilizers to jumpstart this year's planting season. The CRFPS had a fund of ₱6.24 million which benefitted 250 farmers, including those of Sitio Mapita.