by Mai Gevera

Davao City (7 June) -- Cardava farming practitioners along with local government agricultural extension officer from the region convened for the first Trainers' Training on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) held in this city.

Organized and implemented by Strategic Development Cooperation Asia, Incorporated, and in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture -AMAS, the activity gathered the support of the different cardava farmers from the five provinces in the region to consolidate and validate best practices for cardava farming and at the same time acquire skills in implementing practical and low-cost GAP.

The promotion of Good Agricultural Practices for Cardava Farming through training of service providers is one of the main interventions being implemented by SDCAsia under its USAID funded program Banana Agri-chain Competitiveness Enhancement (B-ACE).

Aside from very intensive in house lecture-forums on GAP's main aspects given by GAP experts, the participants also had a field exposure to a cardava farm in Brgy. Goma, Digos Davao del Sur, to facilitate the translations of concepts into real-life situations.

"There is a need to tie the knots. GAP is practically the cultural practices already known to the farmers, through the advocacy of the field agricultural technicians, some of which they could already be applying on their respective farms, but there is insufficient awareness on the rationale behind the system itself. GAP is to increase productivity, minimize work load and aligning farm produce to food safety, and not to add burden to the cardava farmers", Jonah Nobleza, a GAP expert and SDCAsia Marketing Specialist commented.