Dinalupihan Mayor Maria Angela Garcia inspects corn crops. Contributed photos
DINALUPIHAN, Bataan — The local government unit here on Monday announced that newly-harvested vegetables from “precision farms” were shared to medical frontliners and patients of government hospitals in the province.
Mayor Maria Angela “Gila” Garcia said 168 kilograms of tomatoes and 83 kgs of eggplants were distributed free to district hospitals in Dinalupihan, Mariveles, Bagac and Orani, the mega quarantine facility in Orani, the Mariveles Mental Wellness & Medical Center, and the Bataan General Hospital in Balanga City.
The donation was part of the initial harvest from three farms in Dinalupihan employing precision farming with the use of drip irrigation under a farm technology from Israel.
On Jan. 26, Wilfredo Adriano began harvesting 1.8 tons of tomatoes in his farm in Barangay San Simon while Flordorada Payar of Barangay Colo and Ariel Mallari of Barangay Dalao started to gather 1.5 tons of eggplants in their farms.
Other farms under the program are planted to other high-value crops like sili, okra, kalabasa, mais, melon and pakwan. There will be continuous harvest in March and April this year, municipal administrator Rollie Rojas said.
“Mga masustansiyang gulay at prutas para sa programa ng nutrisyon tungo sa healthy lifestyle ng bawat Bataeño,” the Dinalupihan mayor said.
The program envisioned by Garcia at transforming Dinalupihan as a model agropolis in Central Luzon is under the public-private-partnership of the provincial government of Bataan and Agrilever–Israel.
Target is for farmers to have a yield of four times more from high value crops through precision farming than the traditional method.
