By Benjie S. De Yro
When it comes to challenge, trust the members of the Balay Ni IFAN Media Group of the National Nutrition Council in region 2, the pioneer group in the country today.
For the National Nutrition Council in Cagayan Valley, the Farm-to-Table Challenge can be the ultimate challenge to residents of the region during this pandemic times.
“Home quarantine brings out the best in us,” Meggie Lonzaga, Regional Nutrition Coordinator said.
The challenge, concocted by NNC Region 2 and the media task force, was simple at first glance. One only has to post a photo of their home garden and cooked meals using the garden’s produce to show one is food secured.
“It’s food production amid the pandemic to address the challenge of food security and prevent worsening of malnutrition in the region,” Lonzaga added.
For the Balay Ni IFAN media group on nutrition, growing your own food, is in fact, like printing your own money.
Floridel Trilles, station manager of FBN-DZCV has always been into home gardening and amid COVID-19 pandemic, started sharing his produce to his staff and immediate neighbors. “We could hardly consume our own produce so we have to share the people,” Trilles said as he repeatedly urged listeners to plant their own food.
A small residential area at 200 square meters did not dampen the spirit of Rodel Ordillos’ family to go into vegetable production. As production manager of RBC Cable System in Tuguegarao, he likewise been harping on backyard gardening.
“You know how Ilocanos love dinengdeng (vegetable dish). This pandemic, we went back to re-cultivating our small area for all types of vegetables”, he said as he was proud to post on his FB Page and that of the NNC Region 2, his cooked Kalabasa blooms, plus a photo bundles upon bundles of fresh Sweet Potato leaves.
“Farm to Table Challenge, accepted,” Ordillos proclaimed. Many vegetable gardeners say food taste better when you grow your own.
For Digna Pagulayan of Iclub, it was a plus factor that she got enough area to plant her food. Vegetable gardening has always been part of the Filipino tradition as to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.
“But to cook these vegetables from your garden and post it on social media is really a challenge,” she said. She, too, accepted the challenge.
The surpringly high prices of vegetables in the local market as early as March at the onset of the pandemic, has convinced the government and the private sector to address the situation. The provincial government of Cagayan, the Department of Agriculture and the local government unit of Tuguegarao City distributed not only seeds but ready-to-plant vegetable seedlings.
Netizens, too, started to organize gardeners to share photos of their gardens and tips. Suddenly, social media was abuzz with gardening how’s to as online seeling of produce became the order of the day.
For some of the founding members of Balay Ni IFAN media group like Teresa Campos of Radyo Pilipinas-DWPE, COVID-19 brought the media to their backyard gardens.
“For so long a time, our orientation has always been the laptop, tape recorders and microphone,” she noted.
For the media, gardening is an antidote that does not need a prescription and has no limit on dosage.
Why, no less than Atty. Mabel Villarica Mamba, wife of Cagayan Governor Manuel Mamba, has accepted the challenge and how.
After media work as production chief of RBC Cable System, Rodel Ordillos tried to find something worthwhile to do. With his family, turned to bountiful food productivity within the façade of its house.###
