Former senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson is eyeing a scholarship program for deserving children of farmers to encourage the youth to take agriculture courses to help enhance the country’s food security.
Lacson, who is eyeing a Senate return under the administration’s “Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas” slate, likened the idea to the “Doktor Para sa Bayan Act” authored by his fellow Alyansa senatorial candidate, former senator Vicente Sotto III.
Lacson said the government would hit two birds with one stone since the scholarship program for farmers’ children “will enhance our agricultural productivity while increasing the interest of our youths in farming.”
“This is to encourage children of farmers to study new technologies through scholarships in agriculture courses. They will study new technologies and developments to improve their agricultural yield, instead of using traditional manual methods,” he told a “Konsultahang Bayan” with local farmers in Rosales, Pangasinan.
He added that the program will also help the country become an agriculture exporting country instead of an importing one.
Many of the farmers in the audience cheered when Lacson asked them if they approve of such an agriculture scholarship program.
Lacson also told the crowd that the University of the Philippines – Los Baños (UPLB) in Laguna is one of the institutes that offer masteral courses on biotechnology.
The UPLB National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (BIOTECH) was able to procure modern, state-of-the-art equipment due to the yearly increases in its budget stemming from the institutional amendments that Lacson introduced to the national budget.
“We must have young farmers who can learn to use new technologies and equipment to improve our production. We can add funding to the appropriate agencies for this,” Lacson said.
The former PNP chief also reiterated his push for digitalization of transactions to allow the government to address the needs of farmers using a data-driven and science-based approach.
“If we resort to guesswork, we allow discretion. If there is discretion, there is corruption,” he said.
