ATI Compound, El Salvador City---Taking the initiative to bridge the digital divide and promote complementation between the highly IT-literate youth and today’s aging farmers, the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) in close coordination and partnership with Smart Communications, Inc. along with Probe Media Foundation, Inc. came up with the Digital Farmers Program (DFP).

DFP is aimed at advancing the local agricultural industry's adoption of more innovative forms of technology in farming which would complement the next generation of farmers and the more experienced ones. The farming knowledge, wisdom and experience of the more experienced farmers would definitely benefit the country’s future farmers while equipping the farmers of today with the necessary skills requiring the use of internet and sophisticated technologies. The program initiative is to keep abreast with the changing times and cope with the alarming decline of farmers in the country.

Just in time for the recently concluded “Assessment of Learning Site for Agriculture (LSA) and School for Practical Agriculture (SPA), OIC-Assistant Center Director Noemi Beth Lasmarias-Gomez Macario in her speaking engagement delivered a quick run through of what DFP is all about.

The program scheme is to partner the next generation farmers, who also happen to be internet savvy and ICT literate with their farmer parents in a mentoring and coaching session regarding smartphone basics, social media, messaging and file sharing applications, as well as mobile photography and videography, among others. Consequently, the DFP aims to produce various agriculture-related content which will be developed by these farmer-youth pairs and will be uploaded and shared in different ICT platforms.