Students harvest rice at Rizal Park

MANILA, Philippines - Thirty-nine selected students from 13 elementary and high schools in Metro Manila reaped rice at the Rizal Park’s rice garden yesterday as part of National Rice Awareness Month this November.

The event was held “to increase the public’s awareness, appreciation, and understanding of this staple food crop that has sustained generations of Filipinos,” said Eufemio Rasco Jr., Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice) executive director.

The 300-square-meter terraced garden, the first of its kind in the country, was launched in 2001 by PhilRice, DA-Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), Philippine Commission for the New Century and the Millennium, National Parks Development Committee, and Asia Rice Foundation (ARF) based in Los Baños, Laguna.

Mario Movillon of PhilRice told The STAR that hybrid, modern, and traditional rice varieties were harvested during the occasion.

Tended all-year-round by PhilRice, the garden is open to the public in response to the observation that “many Filipinos, especially city dwellers, grow old not knowing how rice is grown or, worse, how it looks like.”