For the last 30 years, the Aklan State University in Banga town has been teaching students and farmers new farming techniques and entrepreneurship through the so-called one-stop shop using e-commerce.

Dr. Benny Palma, university president, said the university has been setting performance standards for agriculture in Western Visayas.

It has been recognized by the Bureau of Plant Industry for its successful hybridization project. The bureau, through its National Seed Center, had awarded the university initiative for the best hybridization of Magallanes with Davao pomelo called Aguilar 1. The project was in honor of Dr. Helmar Aguilar, former university president.

Also, both the National Fruit Center and the National Seed Center recognized the university's high0end variety of rambutan as a national winner.

The university is formulating the first variety of a seedless rambutan using the gibberellic acid technology, a synthetic plant hormone.

Mr. Palma said the university has established some components for agriculture students and farmers wherein they will be taught the application of a technology for certain agricultural crops.

This is done through the one-stop shop information that is considered a vehicle for technology transfer to farmers. The farmers can also avail themselves of the services of incubator projects through mass propagation and entrepreneurial demonstration farms.

For several years, the university, through the Agricultural Training Institute, has been training farmers to become "professors" for their colleagues in the field and is teaching them how to be entrepreneurs.

Through a website funded by the Development Bank of the Philippines, farmers can showcase their agricultural products on the internet.

The prospective foreign buyers can have information about the products through photos and feature stories that could encourage them to order such agricultural crops.

Meanwhile, farmers from 10 out of 17 municipalities in Aklan are benefiting from the biotechnology initiative developed by the university.

Aside from e-commerce, agricultural students and farmers can avail themselves of a start-up capital from the local government, especially for those into agricultural technologies for poverty alleviation.

The future of biotechnology using e-commerce is promising, thus, the university is constructing a consolidation building for farmers.

"This building is aimed to gather the produced agricultural crops in the province and, upon consolidation, we immediately sell them directly to consumers," Mr. Palma said. In the province, agricultural crops have a high demand since thousands of tourists flock to nearby Boracay island in Malay town.

While the consolidation building is still being constructed, the farmers are having difficulty in supplying the demand of Boracay alone.

Thus, resort owners had to order fruits and vegetables and other agricultural crops, including meat, from Baguio, Cebu and Davao to augment the supply.