CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – As part of the pandemic response of the government, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has distributed more than 100,000 various vegetable and fruit-bearing tree seedlings in Central Luzon since July this year.
DENR Regional Executive Director Paquito Moreno Jr. said the initiative is to secure food for local communities and promote urban forestry.
“This pandemic has greatly affected our communities and many of our people lost their jobs. We came up with this strategy to reach them out and somehow ease the economic impact of this health crisis,” he furthered.
DENR worked closely with Department of Agriculture and the Inter-Agency Task Force and has activated its Modern Mechanized Forest Nursery (MMFN) in Tarlac to produce various vegetables seedlings such as string beans, pechay, okra and eggplant.
“Although it was intended primarily to produce seedlings for our country’s reforestation programs, we saw the potential of the MMFN to provide much-needed help to our citizenry in the face of the pandemic,” he added.
DENR has also set up various “community plantree” in the region and gave away over 90,000 seedlings of various fruit trees, including kasoy, avocado, sampaloc, duhat, mangga, rambutan, guyabano, bignai, narra, fire tree, molave and bitaog to promote urban greening and environmental stability.
The community plantree is inspired by the community pantry movement in the country but instead of giving away free food, fruit-tree seedlings were given away to communities.
