I'm Cristita Florentino.
I live in Barangay Balabag, Digos City.
I have a 4 1/2 hectare farm which I inherited from my parents.
My area slopes towards the river. My plants are coconuts, mangoes and other fruits.
Between them, I have intercropped cacao trees.
Now, I am part of FarmerLink and it gives me continuous information about farming.
I received a text alert about the weather.
It said that during the dry period, we must water our plants.
It also helps if we cover the ground around the trees with dried weeds.
These will retain the ground water longer.
I applied the recommendations since I also observed that it hasn't rained for some time.
I watered my cacao seedlings so that they will survive.
From another text message, I also learned that the dried weeds and twigs that I used to cover the ground will become soil nutrients after decomposing.
I've proven that it's good to take all the precautions from the text messages.
The plants didn't dry up because of the ground cover and regular watering.
Thanks God, our cacao plants survived. They are still under the coconut trees.
A mother of six, Cristita lives with her husband and three of her children. Drought and typhoons batter the Philippines constantly and often devastate farms. Grameen Foundation and partners developed FarmerLink to give farmers timely mobile-based alerts and access to services they need to manage the impact of extreme weather.
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