For easier assistance from the national government, the Benguet agricultural office has urged farmers to get listed in the Registry System for the Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA) of the Department of Agriculture.
Benguet Provincial Agriculturist Delinia Juan said as of June, there are 70,000 Benguet farmers registered in the system. The list includes agricultural farm workers or those who do not own the land they are tilling.
The program is the national baseline data implemented by the DA nationwide for all agricultural workers that includes crop farmers, fisherfolks and livestock raisers.
Juan said being registered in the system means farmers could easily access assistance from the government, especially during calamities.
“We continue to encourage the farmers to be enrolled in the system. If they submitted crop damagesand they did not enroll at the RSBASA, then they will not be included in the list of beneficiaries,” Juan said.
If a farmer is registered in the system, their registration would be checked by the DA including geo-tagging of their farm lands to validate their claims.
Farmers can register through their municipal agriculture offices, which will submit the forms to the provincial agriculture office. The forms will then be submitted to the DA region that will conduct the encoding in the system.
The registration, which started in 2019 but was halted during the Covid-19 pandemic, is ongoing.
The national registry also showed 30 percent of the total population of Benguet farmers belong to young farmers. Juan said the young farmers are those aged 30 years old and below.
The data from the registry could also be compared to the data that will be produced by the Philippine Statistics Authority’s ongoing community-based monitoring system. – Ofelia C. Empian
