URBAN AGRI PROJECT UP IN PASIG CITY

The Department of Agriculture (DA) and the City of Pasig joined hands with RE-TERRA in promoting urban agriculture in the metropolis to supply food demand, generate livelihood, and create green architecture amidst the dense urban landscape.

“The Philippine agriculture must transform into more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient, and more sustainable agriculture food systems so it could better respond to the pandemic and other challenges besetting the sector,” said Agriculture Secretary William Dar during the culminating activity of the Farmers’ and Fisherfolk’s Month celebration on May 27, 2021.

“Agriculture is too important of a job to be left alone with the Department. We are calling for sustained and stronger public-private-people partnership. The DA should steer, the local government units and other stakeholders and partners must row. After all, everyone is part of the food system,” he added.

RE-TERRA is a design competition that calls on architects to re-imagine an existing site in Pasig City into a green, food-producing urban agriculture farm and center. An initiative that started last year, RE-TERRA is a call for innovative designs and solutions that will integrate agriculture into the cities.

“Modern technologies are there. But we are not using them optimally to bring in the level of productivity that we need. In urban agriculture, we are looking at the RE-TERRA project as a major factor in producing the fruits and vegetables needed in the metropolis by blending in urban landscape with green agriculture—this is the kind of city that we want to see,” the Agri chief added.

The City of Pasig is one of the country’s largest and densest metropolises. So, for the RE-TERRA project, Mayor Vico Sotto provided three expository sites within Pasig City for the winning architectural designs to creatively and innovatively showcase urban agriculture.

“We are happy to collaborate with DA and the group of RE-TERRA for this project. The City of Pasig hopes that through this initiative, we will ignite the fire among the youth to be more involved in making agriculture more modern and well-adept with the emerging technologies and innovations of our times,” Sotto said in a virtual message.

In a presentation, architect and RE-TERRA founder Kathleen Encorporado mentioned that during the pre-pandemic, there are about 2 million families that experienced urban hunger in Metro Manila and it doubled to 4.2 million during the height of the pandemic in 2020.

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