FEATURE | DEVCOM
PAIS: Hope of the Farmers Written by Mdpn. Anjo D. Tuboc Photos by Mdpn. Jayland E. Singuillo and Mr. June Famur Jr.
I
t was dark that morning. Huge bamboo baskets with eggplants are made ready in the truck. After that, together with a companion, they wear a piece of face mask and a face shield as protection for a long day ahead. Then they hit the road.
Mang Juan was a local farmer in their small barangay. He has an eggplant plantation, which serves as his source of livelihood. That morning, Mang Juan looks forward to earning a much higher income than his previous one. With the sun setting in the east, Mang Juan retraces the road where he came. However, you can see a frowny look drawn on Mang Juan’s face. It turned out that he hardly sold anything for today’s harvest, even to regain his profit due to the sluggish demands as a result of Covid-19. Mang Juan is one of the numerous farmers in the Philippines that was greatly affected by the pandemic. Ever since it started to spread, the COVID-19 posed a threat to human health. Necessary countermeasures to the virus, such as quarantines and other protocols, have remained in place for many months, and no one is certain when this will end. Various efforts to control the
virus, such as limiting human movement has inevitably caused economic shocks and social costs that affected the functioning of agricultural and food systems in the country. To address the agricultural issues faced by the local farmers like Mang Juan, the Provincial Government of Iloilo has introduced a digital program to help revive the local economy and assist its local farmers amidst the effects of the pandemic. Led by Iloilo Governor Arthur R. Defensor Jr., they launched the Provincial Agri-fishery Information System (PAIS) as one of their digital programs for the provincewide institutionalization of their agricultural information system. Before that, Representative Lorenz Defensor and her other committee members, early this year, filed House Bill No. 6721, an act that aims to initiate an Agricultural
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