SCIENCE CITY OF MUÑOZ – Improved nature of agro-economy in different localities in the country.
That’s what Israeli Ambassador to the Philippines Ephraim Ben Matityau sees as he banks on Israeli- trained Filipino students, and there are now a thousand of them, charting the process in doing it.
“We are about to galvanize them into a coalition for advanced agricultural technology,” Matityau said in an interview here recently. He was at Barangay Magtanggol here for the closing activities of 40 Israeli students who embarked on a ten-day humanitarian mission at the village’s public integrated school.
He personally thanked Mayor Nestor Alvarez, and the other officials here and the provincial police, for helping the student’s carry out their mission successfully. The ambassador said his government trained last year 570 students from different universities in the country, and is currently training 440 more, through a “learning-by-doing” system in Israel.
The training, he said, is for 11 months. “Based on the success shown by the student-trainees, we are sure that they can now lead in pursuing an adaptive, creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial process of helping improved the farmers’ agro-economic pursuits in their respective communities,” Matityau said.
The ambassador, who was former deputy head of Mashav which is Israeli’s agency for international development cooperation in developing countries, said he has done partnering activities in the country for the formation of the coalition of the trained students.
He said that with the help of the Commission on Higher Education, he has talked with university presidents in the different parts of the country for the “modeling” projects of the trained students in agricultural technologies.
“We have high hopes for the trainees to become leaders of change in agro-economy in their respective regions,” the ambassador said. “They have been trained to open their minds and eyes for new ideas in innovation, academics, entrepreneurship, and creativity for the application of adaptive technologies.”
“As you can see, our country had turned our harsh and dry agricultural conditions into very productive outputs, your opposite sometimes harsh wet agricultural conditions can also do wonders. This, we hope, can be done by the trained new breed of agricultural technologies,” he continued.
Israel today is described as a world leader in agricultural technologies. It is a major exporter of fresh produce from its lands which were formerly rocky and in major areas in desert conditions in its large part, lacking in abundant water resources for agricultural pursuit.
It produces wheat, sorghum, corn, different kinds of fruits, vegetables, cotton, among others, and are mostly exported, and is the world’s leader in having the highest milk production per dairy animal.
