Agricultural Leader Training School

Agricultural Leader Training School

 

[시사타임즈 = 이철원 시사타임즈 회장] The main industry in the Philippines is agriculture, where more than 55% of the total workforce is engaged in agriculture. The Philippines mainly exports rice and corn, and exports abaca, sugar, tobacco, and coconut, but productivity is low. The cause of such low productivity is the relationship between landlords and tenant farmers. Many tenant farmers have to donate half (50%) of the grain produced to the landlord, and they are often damaged by typhoons, so their poverty is becoming a social unrest factor. As I looked here and there, a lot of land was being teased without cultivation. Landlords did not farm hard because there was no problem in making a living even if they did not farm, and most farmers (70% of the rural population) were unable to farm, not their own land.

 

As a result, the Philippines has become a country that imports rice despite its favorable conditions for rice farming as it is a natural environment where 2-3 crops are possible. Moreover, the Philippine government is lending farmland to foreign companies such as China and Qatar, who take all of their locally produced crops to their home countries, making the situation for Filipino farmers even worse. Immediately after the typhoon, aid organizations in many countries distributed relief supplies and asked local officials, "Why don't you grow agricultural products in such good natural conditions?" asked a lot of questions. So, Palo Mayor operated a demonstration farm to pour soil into an empty lot in the middle of the city and show it to outside groups. This is because they themselves felt ashamed while receiving help. In addition, Palosi operated a kimchi farm with the support of a Korean Christian organization with the support of the Arau Unit, so that for a while, she was able to buy vegetables and eat at the farm. However, after 5 months, the farm was stopped due to the uncooperative attitude of the village chief, the owner of the land.

 

▲Support for re-visit after withdrawal (c)시사타임즈

 

Coconuts were the main source of income for most farmers in Leyte. However, due to typhoon Haiyan, coconut trees suffered a lot of damage, making it difficult to harvest coconuts for the next 10 years. Therefore, the governor tried to introduce farmers to alternative crops and vegetable-based, high-income crops that could be grown instead of coconuts. The governor has asked me several times to help research ways to grow onions and broccoli in Leyte's environment. I mentioned this in early September when former Defense Minister Kwon Young-hae visited the Arau Unit to encourage Korean War veterans. In response, Gwan Kwan said that he had visited the Philippines several times and observed the agricultural environment, and suggested that we build an agricultural school and spread our technology in order to build a broken agricultural foundation here.

 

▲Agricultural School Construction (c)시사타임즈

▲Agricultural School Site Arrangement (c)시사타임즈

 

 

The next day, I visited the governor and explained the plan to invest in agriculture and establish an agricultural school. The governor said that he was also very interested in agriculture, and after discussing it with the agriculture officer, he provided 2 hectares of government land to build an agricultural school in Tanawan free of charge. After one week, we started the agricultural school construction on 2 hectares of land in Tanawan City and completed the office, 3 classrooms, 1 building (2nd floor) for the instructors, a warehouse, and a parking lot in 10 weeks.

 

And on December 17th, just before we left the Philippines, the completion ceremony of the agricultural school was held. A memorandum of agreement was signed with Governor Leyte and the Korea International Agricultural Development Institute regarding school operation, and this agricultural school was named ‘Arau Agricultural Leader Training School’. With a plan to operate it for the next 50 years, we donated equipment such as fork cranes, dumps, and water trucks for the Arau Unit, and additionally donated tractors and rice transplanters from the Korea International Agricultural Development Institute. Agricultural leaders to be produced here will complete six months of education and grow specific crops on their own farmland using the skills they learned at school, seeds and fertilizers received.

 

In the Philippines, which supplied unified rice to Korea in the 1970s, the Republic of Korea has now established a training school for agricultural leaders called ‘Arau’. It is hoped that the farmers affected by the typhoon will learn the advanced farming methods of the Republic of Korea and become pioneers of Leyte and Philippine agriculture, and develop into a 'land capable of producing an amount of rice that can feed North Koreans after the reunification of the two Koreas'. In this way, the establishment of the 'Arau Agricultural Leader Training School' became our 'last drop of sweat'.

 

글 : 이철원 시사타임즈 회장

 

 

 

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이철원 시사타임즈 회장 wangco123@timesisa.com