Scholars Upscale Social Marketing To Promote Hero Farmers

Can you imagine life without farmers? A team of scholars from the Young Minds Academy (YMA) Season 5 leadership program can’t. They harnessed the power of marketing strategies mostly through the new media to promote a farmer empowerment project in Consolacion, Cebu. Because of the on-going training that the farmers are undergoing, they will soon yield better and abundant harvests in their respective farms all over Cebu.

The online community has been abuzz with the iluvfarmers farmers campaign that champions hero farmers in Cebu.

About Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan

Team CPMPC of the YMA program of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. created a campaign for the “Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan.” The project aims to educate farmers in vegetable and fruit production and innovations as part of the poverty alleviation goals of the Municipality of Consolacion.



Around 120 farmers go to the 5,000 square meter demo farm site in Brgy. Danglag to learn from the trainers from Harbest Agribusiness Corporation and the Department of Agriculture Regional Offices.



The program’s aim is to empower our farmers with knowledge to improve farm practice and increase yield, thereby providing better income opportunities.



The project started last September 11 and is set to end on November 18, 2011. This has been done in 18 other project sites all over the country as well, and as of writing, graduated more than two thousand farmers.

About iluvfarmers

The Team CPMPC scholars of YMA drafted and implemented a massive campaign to help these farmers gain social awareness and support from the public with the parameters set by RAFI which is 1,000 likes on the Facebook page and 10,000 peso donation or signature of commitment within a one month period.



But instead of focusing on achieving the goals, they turned to the notion that the quality of interaction and support they get is more important especially within the deadline.



As part of the marketing strategy, they branded their campaign as “iluvfarmers” to imply the need for people to appreciate our farmers who are considered as unsung heroes. Meticulous planning and execution was done from designing the logo, content creation and development, setting of specific goals, art direction of campaign materials such as online posters, advertisements, teasers, blog posts, endorsements from different personalities and regular updates in the social networking sites. They also went to the farm demo site and worked with the farmers themselves under extreme weather conditions and poor classroom setting.



The scholars themselves underwent input sessions with social marketing experts in the region today.



They created a Facebook page with a custom designed landing page which can be accessed at http://fb.me/iluvfarmers where details of the program and how you can support the campaign and the farmers are placed. They also created a Twitter account http://twitter.com/iluvfarmers where conversations and interactions are done not only with netizens but as well as Agriculture and Farming organizations all over the world. To curate the beautiful life stories of the farmers and to regularly update the supporters with the latest developments of the project, Team CPMPC scholars also had created a blog site http://iluvfarmers.blogspot.com for better content and brand establishment.





The iluvfarmers Campaign is being spearheaded by Jaysee John R. Pingkian, Lorbe Catadman, Babykit Marie Nunez, Irish Nunez and John Rhecel Solon members of the Team CPMPC of the YMA Season 5.

Why you should help?

Farming is not as fun as you would experience through games like Farmville. It actually takes a lot of effort and life as we know it and some people have not only considered it as livelihood but life in itself.



The project needs to sustain because they have learned to pursue a reliable source of income with very little capital through the technologies and knowledge imparted to them.



They need not only awareness from people but as well as donations in money or in kind such as farming tools and fertilizers, vegetable and fruit seeds and seedlings because after the training they are expected to apply their knowledge unto their respective farm lands.



Keep in mind that they are also the providers of their families.



They also need social awareness because little attention and support is given to these people whose efforts are barely recognized and compensated for the amount of work they are doing.

How can you help?

4 Steps to Help Them!

1. LIKE and SHARE this page! COMMENT on photos and posts as well!
2. DONATE your Facebook or Twitter Status:

• They work hard to provide us food. We can help them do better. FOLLOW @iluvfarmers and LIKE http://fb.me/iluvfarmers 
• Somewhere in the mountains are heroes who work tirelessly to provide us and their families. FOLLOW @iluvfarmers and LIKE http://fb.me/iluvfarmers
• Facebook is not just for emo stuff. It could also be used to support our hero farmers! FOLLOW @iluvfarmers and LIKE http://fb.me/iluvfarmers
• Or you could CREATE YOUR CREATIVE STATUS and post it on the Facebook page so they could feature you!

1. FOLLOW us on Twitter http://twitter.com/iluvfarmers
2. DONATE or ask people to donate money, farm tools, farm supplies, seedlings or seeds.
• Contact iluvfarmers Campaign Ambassador Lorbe Catadman: 09299613737

Farmer's in Cultivating a Vital Role

"Farmworkers play a vital role in cultivating the food we eat every day". Even though 85 percent of our fruits and vegetables are harvested by hand, farmworkers remain largely invisible.

Agricultural labor includes planting, cultivating, harvesting and preparing crops for market or storage. Afarmer’s work can be very hard. Hours are long, often sunrise to sunset. During planting and harvesting seasons, crop farmers rarely have days off. The rest of the year, they sell their crops, fix machinery, and plan for the next year.

The Philippines is still primarily an agricultural country despite the plan to make it an industrialized economy by 2000. Most citizens still live in rural areas and support themselves through agriculture. The country’s agriculture sector is made up of 4 sub-sectors: farming, fisheries, livestock, and forestry.

The country’s main agricultural crops are rice, corn, coconut, sugarcane, bananas, pineapple, coffee, mangoes, tobacco, and abaca. Secondary crops include peanut, cassava, camote(a type of rootcrop), garlic, onion, cabbage, eggplant, calamansi(a variety of lemon), rubber, and cotton. The year 1998 was a bad day year for ariculture because of adverse weather conditions. The Philippines exports its agricultural products around the world, including the United States, Japan, Europe, and ASEAN countries.

"Farmworkers play a vital role in cultivating the food we eat every day"

"Helps the Surrounding Clean and Green"

"Our Contemporary"

MAJOR EXPORT PRODUCTS

● Coconut Oil & other coconut products

● Fruits

● Vegetables

● Bananas

● Prawns(a type of shrimp)

● Cavendish banana

● Cayenne pineapple

● Tuna

● Seaweed

● Carrageen

One of the most pressing concerns of the agricultural sector is the rampant conversation of agricultural land into golf courses, residential subdivisions, and industrial parks of resorts.

 "source of income"

Small land-holders find it more profitable to sell their land to developers in exchange for cash specially since they lack capital for seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and wages for hiring workers to plant and harvest the crops.

"Hardworking"

Another concern is farmer’s continued reliance on chemical-based fertilizers or pesticides that have destroyed soil productivity over time. In recent years however, farmers have been slowly tuning to organic fertilizer, or at least to a combination of chemical and organic inputs in addition, environmental damage is another major concern.

http://iluvfarmers.blogspot.com/

Farming is not as fun as Farmville. Somewhere in the mountains are unsung heroes who work so hard without complaining so they could provide us with food basic needs for their families at home.

ILUVfarmers is a fundraising and awareness campaign spearheaded by the Team CPMPC scholars of the Ramon Aboitiz Inc. for the “Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan” program of the Municipality of Consolacion.

What is Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan?

Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan is a farmer empowerment program in the Philippines that aims to give local farmers proper trining to yield abundant and qualify fruits and veggies.

It is currently being done in the Municipality of Consolacion with over 180 farmers. Every Friday, Farmers gather at the farm demo site in a 5,000 square meter agricultural land in Baragay Danglang, Consolacion to take part in the training given by Harbest Agribusiness Corporation. 

The program has graduated more than 2,000 farmers nationwide in different farm sites. Because of it, farmers have learned about intensitive dual-tech hands-on traiing on commercial production technology for different vegetables and short-term fruits such as melon, watermelon, cucumber, eggplant, squash, ampalaya, sweet corn and papaya.

Iluvfarmers is another project of the Young Minds Academy (YMA) Season5 Scholars of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI). Team4 Generation A Team CPMPC members are Jaysee John R. Pingkian, Lorbe Catadman, Babykit Marie R. Nuñez, Irish L. Nuñez and John Rhecel V. Solon.

For more info:

FACEBOOKhttp://facebook.com/iluvfarmers

TWITTERhttp://twitter.com/iluvfarmers

 BLOGhttp://iluvfarmers.blogspot.com