Bislig City, Surigao del Sur. The Agricultural Training Institute- Regional Training Center (ATI-RTC) 13 in partnership with Smart Communications, Inc. successfully conducted the 3 batches of training on Digital Farmers Program 102 on August 2021. A total of 60 farmer-and-youth pairs from Bislig City and San Agustin (Surigao del Sur) and Buenavista (Agusan del Norte) participated in the training on August 9-10, 2021, August 11-12, 2021, and August 17-18, 2021 respectively.

The DFP is a ladderized approach in bridging the gap between agriculture and digital technology, as well as responding to the problems in decreasing youth participation in the agriculture sector. It revolves around the farmers and youth partnership where youth assist the farmers in building knowledge, skills as well as confidence in using digital technologies. With these approaches, more and more farmers will become confident in this growing digital world. This program contains three-level courses the DFP 101 (Beginner), DFP 102 (intermediate) and DFP 103 (advance).

Participants from DFP 101 will continue through DFP 102. This course particularly focuses on in-depth applications on agriculture using advanced agri apps, e-commerce, and usage of social media and smartphones in boosting their farm business operations.

The topic discussed were Introduction and review of the lessons learned in Digital Farmers Program (DFP) 101, Advance Agri apps, advanced social media marketing, e-commerce platforms, and introduction to Paymaya.

“I am glad we’ve met again through this training. I would like to start my simple impression by saying thank you to the resource person and other staff behind all this. Thank you for all your efforts and great choices in doing this kind of activity. It will help us in a lot of ways especially to us “the youth” I’ve learned things that thought it is not essential in agriculture. This is my second time attending such training and it made me realize how important our cellphones are (from the social media platform to online transactions). The knowledge I obtain here will serve as my tool in sharing with our beloved farmers. To my co-participants also, thank you for wearing all your smiles it made me feel I am belonging to this team. I appreciate your kindness and your cheerful heart everyone. Thank you for the learnings. It is worth it. God bless and keep safe always. See you in the next training”. said Ms. Mybe T. Tiodianco, one of the active youth participants from the first batch.

As an output, the participants formulate their own social media marketing plan, creating their own QR codes as well as having their own PayMaya account. They were also able to present their dream boards and social media marketing plan during the training.