Green tech to improve Mankayan potato quality

MANKAYAN, Benguet -- Potato farmers here are now assured of a stable and accessible source of quality planting materials for a bountiful harvest. 

The Mankayan Young Farmers Organization (MYFO), organized in November 2012, is composed of more than 40 members who were former agriculture trainees in Japan.

With the learnings they have acquired on farm technologies, the Organization aims to increase agricultural livelihood that promotes easy and affordable farming system that can produce competent marketable products.

While the members of MYFO have long been engaged in vegetable production as their livelihood, the Organization opted for the establishment of a protected cultivation area to meet the emerging demands on high quality potato produce and restore the quality of marketable tubers and to provide affordable price of planting materials for farmers.

With support from the Dept. of Agriculture’s Philippine Rural Development Project, the Organization is now assured of producing quality and marketable potato tubers using the greenhouse technology.

“The installation of these greenhouses will address the need for a steady and available source of potato planting materials which will benefit not only the members of the organization but more importantly, the other farmers in the community,” said Jovito Banglod, MYFO President.

Along with the greenhouses, the Organization will also receive 400 pots of potato mother plant, seedling trays, water tank, and power knapsack sprayer