Empowering the entrepreneurial skills of women vegetable growers through farmer business school
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Abstract
Vegetable growing is a promising enterprise but production is dominated mostly by men. Women are involved merely in the marketing of the produce without considering the business aspect. Thus, there is a need to empower women vegetable growers to harness the best of them in terms of their production and entrepreneurial capabilities. The study was undertaken todetermine the personal and growing characteristics of FBS participants, assess their knowledge on vegetable growing as a business and determine their concurrence that participation in FBS improved their skills on vegetable growing as a business. The study utilized 111 women participants who are dominated by 50 years old, married, high school graduates with five household members and earned a monthly income of below PhP5,000.00. Their vegetable cultivation experience were averaged of 12.34 years and their averaged farm size were about 3,000 square meters. The most common grown vegetable included the ingredients used in “pinakbet” Filipino delicacy, which are grown at least 1.5 times a year. They owned the lands they had used for vegetable growing and retailed their produce. The conduct of FBS generally improved the knowledge and skills of the participants on vegetable growing as a business. The conduct also was affected with climate-related problems, conflicted with participant’s farm work, absenteeism and drop-out. Incentives were given to control such. Scaling-up program may further be developed to reach out to a greater number of women farmers in the province
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