Amidst the threat of food shortage, the Department of Agriculture set in motion the implementation of the gulayan sa barangay, urban agriculture garden, and reliving of school gardens in the Ilocos region to ensure that food is always available and accessible to everyone.

With these programs under the High-Value Crops Development Program, some schools, barangays, and farmers’ groups from Ilocos Sur and La Union received various interventions on August 17 and 18 respectively. Both province received more than 1.7 M-worth of agricultural interventions from DA RFO 1.

Some of the agricultural support received by the beneficiaries are garden tools like rake, shovel, spading fork, rake, seedling tray, and trowel, plastic crates, knapsack sprayer, multi-purpose cultivator, grass cutter, water sprinkler, wheel barrow, and various farm inputs such as organic and liquid fertilizers, chemical pesticides, and assorted vegetable seeds.

The school garden is a long-standing program of DA in partnership with the Department of Education that aims to introduce and promote agriculture to young people. The establishment of school garden likewise serves as food basket for schools to augment DepEd’s feeding program and address issues of malnutrition among children.

While both the gulayan sa barangay and urban agriculture garden are established during the height of pandemic, DA continuously supports projects related to the expansion of food production and sustainability among households.