Located at the heart of the strawberry capital of the Philippines is the Benguet State University (BSU). It started as a farm school in 1916, La Trinidad Agricultural High School in 1946, Mountain National Agricultural College in 1969, and became a state university on January 12, 1986. BSU was dubbed as pro-organic university in 2004 and is the first academic institution in the Philippines to acquire an organic certificate. This university has a vision to become a premier state university in South East Asia.
There were 456 enrolled graduate students during summer 2011. During semester term, there were 900+ enrollees of the graduate school which is 10% of the overall population of students enrolled in the university. BSU also admits foreign students since 1980′s. This semester, I have a classmate from Ghana, Africa, taking PhD in Agronomy.
BSU has sister universities in Taiwan (National Chung Hsing University), South Korea (Sangju National University), and Belgium. This marker was put up in partnership of BSU and Sangju National University (SNU) in Seoul.
Posts with resemblance to that of pine tree bark.
BSU ground infront of the colleges
BSU library (with wifi)
During our summer class, we visited the 900m2 organic garden project manage by Dr. Silvestre Kudan, our professor. Multicropping and the application of compost materials are practice in the BSU Generous Garden.
BSU Generous Garden
Dr. Kudan showing the African night crawlers.
Dr. Kudan showing the runners of “Sweet Charlie” variety of strawberry at BSU farm, Balili, La Trinidad, Benguet.
Organic and multicropping pattern
Multicropping: lettuce, broccoli and onion
There were other green houses built funded by the government of Belgium and Israel. They have the same design.
This one was donated by the government of South Korea.
Greenhouse demo on natural farming
BSU has also a diadegma and mite predator rearing house.
As a proof of BSU being a pro-organic university, an organic market was established where they sell the produced from the farm/garden. Others products were supplied by farmers who practiced organic farming.
According to Dr. Kudan, organic vegetables does not rot, it will only mummified and turned into compost. It has long shelf life compared to vegetables raised using chemicals. In the book Plant Foods and Nutritional Immunology: A Scientific Approach written by Dr. Jau-Fei Chen, it was stated that organically produced vegetables have higher nutrient content compared to vegetables grown with chemicals.
Vegie noodles, cherry tomatoes, strawberry jams, strawberries, yoghurt and vegetables
Oyster mushroom and vegetables cookies
Students and teachers at BSU spoke different language. This includes Kalanguya, Kankana-ey, Ibaloi, Ilokano, Tagalog, and English. The first three are the native language of this place.
