Palayamanan: a strategy in enhancing food security and economic stability of rural communities in the fragile environments

There are several technological advances and breakthroughs towards increasing farm productivity and profitability. However, poverty still remains a major concern in most rural communities. There are about 28 million Filipinos, mostly from rural communities who are unable to produce adequate food that will provide their daily energy and nutritional requirements. This fact was substantiated by the Social Weather Station (SWS) survey conducted in 2006, where 20.3% of rural and 14.9% or urban households experienced involuntary hunger for a certain period. Palayamanan is a diversified rice and rice-base crop production system, integrated with livestock production, aquaculture and efficient utilization of biomass resources and by-products as farm inputs to ensure food security, enhance productivity and profitability giving farm families economic stability, and farm sustainability, and ultimately into enterprise development in less favorable rice environments. This is being implemented by the Department of Agriculture-GMA Rice Program (DA-GRP) through the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), in partnership and linkage with the state universities and colleges (SUCs), Department of Agriculture-Regional Agricultural Research Centers (RIARCs), non-government organizations (NGOs), other government agencies (GAs), private agencies and provincial and municipal local government units (P/MLGU). The project focuses on participatory site specific technology development, capacity enhancement of local stakeholders and farmers, and institutional infrastructures to sustain projects activities. At present, there are about 200 established Palayamanan village sites covering almost all the provinces benefiting around 5,000 farm families and more than 20 Palayamanan Model farms in the SUCs, DA-RIARC stations including PhilRice stations, which served as income generating activity of the host agency, and as learning centers and community seed bank in support to the village sites.