LINGAYEN – Gov. Amado T. Espino, Jr. urged Pangasinan farmers to enhance their knowledge on farming technologies to further boost agriculture in the province.
The governor made his call during the distribution and turn-over of farm machineries to over a hundred farmer-irrigators from some 40 farmers’ associations who received the machineries under the Farm Mechanization Program of the DA on July 21 at the Pangasinan Research and Experiment Center (PREC) in Sta. Barbara.
The governor and officials of the Department of Agriculture led by OIC Regional Executive Director Valentino Perdido, Asst. Regional Technical Director Engr.Ed Gonzales, Center Chief Dr. Gilbert Rabara and Regional Agriculture and Council Chairman Vincent Adorna turned over the various farm machineries consisting of hand tractors, four-wheel machineries, harvesters, threshers and water pumps among others.
Said machineries will give a big boost to the agricultural activities of the Pangasinan farmers especially to the rice and corn production.
As he stressed that the province remains to be an agricultural province in the next 30-50 years, Gov. Espino has assured the continuous support of the provincial government to the agriculture department and its programs, as well as the farmers.
With agriculture as the provincial government’s priority program, Gov. Espino disclosed that the province has been doing its best efforts to provide irrigation in all areas of the province that need to be irrigated.
Towards this end, the governor took the pleasure of announcing that the P2.6 billion irrigation project for Pangasinan has been reapproved by the National Economic and Development Authority.
The governor said the project aims to irrigate an additional 18, 000 hectares that will enable the province to compete with other provinces who have a well developed agriculture.
The provincial chief executive also said that the province is looking into possible ways of how it can help as he disclosed that the provincial government is securing a P100 million loan for the repair of dams and theestablishment of shallow tube wells in areas that have no irrigation.
As he called for the enhancement of knowledge and farming technology among the farmers, the governor, urged them to better send their children to other jobs instead of adding another farmer to the family.
Gov. Espino instead advised the farmers to just increase their knowledge by learning new farming technologies. /AVillanueva