AGREA Farm School at TESDA's World Café of Opportunities: Vermicast, Carbonized Rice Hull, and Cocopeat on Display

AGREA Farm School joined TESDA Marinduque's World Café of Opportunities on August 27, 2026, showcasing vermicast, carbonized rice hull, and cocopeat alongside its training programs.

A job fair where the exhibit is also a lesson

On August 27, 2026, the gymnasium of Marinduque State University in Boac filled with jobseekers, students, exhibitors, and government agencies for TESDA Marinduque's World Café of Opportunities. The event was part of TESDA's 32nd anniversary celebration, organized around the theme "Husay. Tibay. Tagumpay."—excellence, resilience, success.

AGREA Foundation was there with a booth that looked different from most. Alongside information about its training programs, the Farm School displayed three products: vermicast, carbonized rice hull (CRH), and cocopeat. To a jobseeker scanning the room for vacancies, these are bags of material. To a farmer, they are the inputs that determine whether a seedling thrives, whether soil holds water, and whether a crop can be grown without reaching for synthetic fertilizer.

That is the point of an exhibit at a job fair. The World Café of Opportunities combined a job fair, a skills and service caravan, and a training showcase in one venue. TESDA scholars demonstrated cocktail and mocktail mixing, sushi making, and chair massage. AGREA's contribution was to show what organic agriculture training actually produces—not a certificate on a wall, but a set of inputs that can be made from farm waste and sold to other farmers.

What the three products do

The three items on the table are not decorative samples. They are outputs of competencies taught at AGREA Farm School under its Organic Agriculture Production NC II program, and each has a specific function in organic production.

Vermicast is worm castings—the end product of vermicomposting, in which earthworms break down organic material into a nutrient-rich amendment. It is used as a soil conditioner and as a component of potting media. AGREA's own modular course in organic fertilizer production lists vermicomposting among its core topics, alongside bokashi, fortified compost, and fortified organic fertilizer.

Carbonized rice hull is rice hull that has been burned under restricted oxygen to produce a char. It improves soil structure, helps retain moisture, and is used in seed germination media and as a component in microbial inoculants and animal bedding. The same course outline lists it as a distinct module.

Cocopeat is a growing medium derived from coconut husk—a material Marinduque has in abundance, given its coconut-based agricultural economy. It holds water well and is used in nurseries and potting mixes.

Together, the three tell a story about how a farm can reduce its dependence on purchased inputs. Rice hull comes from rice milling. Coconut husk comes from copra production. Organic waste comes from the farm itself. Converted through composting, carbonization, and vermiculture, they become the materials a nursery needs—materials that would otherwise be bought, often at prices that cut into a smallholder's margin.

Why these products matter in Marinduque

Marinduque's agricultural economy is dominated by coconut, and the province's farmers have long contended with the structural problems of that dependence: income that arrives in lumps, prices set by traders, and an ageing farm population.

The Farm School's approach to these problems is not to abandon coconut but to diversify around it—intercropping, vegetable production, native chicken raising, and the production of organic inputs that support all of the above. The three products displayed at the job fair are the practical expression of that strategy. They are also saleable goods. A Farm School graduate who can produce vermicast or carbonized rice hull has a product line, not only a skill.

AGREA Farm School's modular courses in organic fertilizer production are accredited and available as short courses, and the broader Organic Agriculture Production NC II qualification is delivered under TESDA scholarship programs including the Coconut Farmers Scholarship Program. The World Café of Opportunities was an occasion to make that pipeline visible to people who might not otherwise encounter it—students considering their options, jobseekers looking for a different path, and farmers who did not know that training was available in their own province.

The scale of the event

The World Café of Opportunities was not a small provincial fair. According to the Philippine Information Agency, 243 job vacancies were offered by 19 local companies and one overseas recruitment agency. Ten government agencies participated, including the Department of Labor and Employment, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, PhilHealth, the Philippine Statistics Authority, the Social Security System, the Department of Information and Communications Technology, the Local Manpower Development–Public Employment Service Office, and the Department of Migrant Workers.

The Philippine Statistics Authority's Marinduque office, for example, provided National ID services and facilitated mobile acceptance of civil registry document requests—the paperwork that employment applications require. That detail is worth noting because it describes what a job fair actually has to solve. A vacancy is not useful to someone who cannot produce the documents to apply for it.

TESDA Marinduque Acting Provincial Director Erwin Buñag described the event as more than an anniversary celebration. The activity, he said, was a venue for providing employment and skills development opportunities to residents—"not just celebrating our 32nd, but providing opportunity to our fellow Marinduqueños."

What AGREA's booth contributed

AGREA's participation was as an exhibitor and training provider, not as an employer with vacancies to fill. The Foundation's contribution was to show what its programs produce and to introduce its training offerings to students and individuals interested in learning new skills.

That is a modest role in a room full of hiring companies. But it addresses a different part of the same problem. A job fair connects people to existing jobs. A training exhibit connects people to the skills that qualify them for jobs that do not yet exist in their municipality—or for enterprises they might build themselves.

The Farm School's own track record includes graduates who have applied their training on family land, raising vegetables and livestock. It includes cohorts of Coconut Farmers Scholarship Program scholars who have completed the 32-day Organic Agriculture Production NC II training and passed national assessment. The booth at the World Café was an invitation to join that pipeline.

What the event does and does not prove

An exhibit at a job fair is an input. It does not establish that anyone who visited the booth will enrol, complete training, find employment, or start an enterprise. Those outcomes depend on follow-through—on applications submitted, scholarships awarded, and the months of practice that turn a training place into a livelihood.

What the event does establish is that the training is visible. A student who did not know that organic agriculture was a viable qualification now knows. A jobseeker who assumed that opportunities lay outside the province now knows that a TESDA-accredited farm school operates a few kilometres from the university gymnasium. And a farmer who has been buying potting media now knows that the materials can be made locally, from waste that is already on the farm.

What comes next

For interested students and jobseekers, the next step is concrete: inquire with AGREA Farm School in Barangay Cawit, Boac, or with TESDA Marinduque about available scholarship slots and program schedules.

For AGREA, the next step is the ordinary work of turning interest into enrolment—answering inquiries, scheduling inductions, and running the next cohort through the same 32 days of hands-on training that produced the products on the table.

We are grateful to TESDA Marinduque and to all the organizers, partners, exhibitors, and participants who made the World Café of Opportunities possible. A job fair works when the room contains both the opportunities and the pathways to them.

To learn more about AGREA Farm School's programs and TESDA scholarship opportunities in Marinduque, visit AGREA Foundation's official channels or inquire directly with the Farm School.