Rice confab focuses on best practices

The 18th National Rice Research and Development Conference, held March 15-17 at the PhilRice Central Experiment Station in Maligaya, Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, put farmers in the spotlight as they talked about their experiences and successes on various aspects of rice farming.

With the theme "Learning from farmers’ best practices," the conference recognized farmers who became successful in rice production because of their innovativeness, hardwork, willingness to learn, and their courage to face challenges.

PhilRice recogizes that farmers’ knowledge and actual practices are vital to the Institute’s efforts in developing location-specific technologies. PhilRice executive director Leocadio Sebastian said listening to and learning from farmers will help researchers and institutions discover new research areas and in refocus their current efforts and activities.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the DA recognizes the need to pursue a program of streng-thening research and development that will liberate small farmers from their limited traditional knowledge, to entrepreneurship and the value generation it makes possible.

Yap said this national rice conference will help DA in coming up with programs that would help the farmers to be better equipped with the current approaches and technologies in agriculture.