MANILA, Philippines -- A three-day Harvest Festival will be held at the Quezon Memorial Circle under the auspices of the Agri-Aqua Network International (AANI) starting Friday, September 16, and ending on Sunday, September 18. The venue will be at the AANI Herbal Garden & Livelihood Center. The festival is open free to the public.

The harvest festival is an annual event to provide farmers from different parts of the country opportunity to display their unique products so the buying public and traders could become aware of them.

The event will provide input suppliers and farmers to meet each other for their mutual benefits. Fruits, vegetables, fisheries and livestock products will be available.

Aside from fruits that are ready to eat, there will be a lot of planting materials of exotic fruit trees that will be available. These include improved varieties of durian, rambutan, longkong lanzones, imported makopa varieties, exotic mango varieties from Taiwan, Thailand, Australia and elsewhere.

Native Poultry Seminar – A whole-day seminar on raising native chickens will be held on Saturday, September 24, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Agribusiness Center of the Department of Agriculture, Elliptical Road, Quezon City.

Conducting the seminar will be Dante Delima, Dr. Rey Itchon and Teresa Saniano. The seminar will cover the importance of native poultry in farming systems development. Topics will include how to select a good site for raising native chicken. The nature of the native chicken will be discussed and the appropriate shelter, housing or bedding will be taken up.

One important portion of the seminar will be identification and processing of natural feeds for chicken. This will include grains, commonly available plants, azolla and many others. Fermented plant and fruit juices will also be discussed. These are helpful in promoting good health among the birds.

Handling and storage of eggs will also be taken up. More information could be had at info@solraya.com.

Interesting agri-people – One agri-personality we met at the 7th National Palmoil Congress in Kidapawan City was JOHN GLENDON, managing director of Univanich Palm Oil Plc in the southern part of Thailand.

His company is the biggest in the industry in Thailand with three large oil mills and a 6,000-hectare oil palm plantations. Aside from their own plantations, about 4,000 smallhold farmers cultivating 40,000 hectares are supplying them with fresh fruit bunch (FFB) for processing. The company buys 700,000 metric tons of FFB from the farmers each year.

Glendon related that Krabi province where his company is located is near the Malaysian border. It used to be a notorious place where crime was rampant because of the lack of livelihood. Oil palm has transformed the place from a notorious territory into a peaceful one. It has become a tourist destination because the people, par-ticularly the oil palm farmers, have become prosperous.