MPSU, BontocโDuring the visit of Senator Imee Marcos at Mountain Province State University, she engaged with the beneficiaries of the Young Farmers Challenge Program (YFC) and KADIWA ni Ani at Kita Program today, April 5.
This is part of her ongoing efforts to support agricultural development and empower local farmers in Mountain Province and across the country.
During the meeting, Sen. Imee asked individually the status of the implementation of these agricultural programs for each of the beneficiaries. She also gave some advice to further improve their marketing systems, such as collaborating with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) for a level-up processing and packaging.
Further, she also mentioned that one of her biggest projects is in Mountain Province, whereas she intends to work on connecting the farm-to-market roads of Mountain Province to lowland areas where products can be easily transported for market.
The Young Farmers Challenge Program is a competitive financial grant assistance of the Department of Agriculture (DA) which is intended to bring back the Filipino youth to agriculture by providing them access to capital in order to help them venture into profitable agriculture, agrifishery, agribusiness, and agrientrepreneurship enterprises and also providing them business development assistance.
There is a pending bill, Senate Bill No. 180, also known as โAn act establishing the young farmers and fisherfolk challenge program, creating for the purpose the young farmers and fisherfolk challenge council,โ which Senator Imee Marcos, along with other senators, Sen. Robinhood Padilla, Sen. Joel Villanueva, and Maria Lourdes Nancy Binay authored that seeks to establish and institutionalize the YFC program and create the Young Farmers and Fisherfolk Challenge Council.
Meanwhile, the KADIWA program aims to help local farmers sell their produce at fair prices, bypassing middlemen and ensuring that both farmers and consumers benefit from better prices.
