Farmers must protect environment to ensure rice, food sufficiency

Written by Bong D. Fabe / Correspondent

Wednesday, 21 July 2010 19:18

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—The head of the Committee on Agriculture in the Misamis Oriental provincial board has urged farmers to be protectors of the environment, noting that the environment and food sufficiency are interconnected. Board member Benedict C. Lagbas, who is concurrent chairman of the province’s Committee on Environment Protection, Ecology and Natural Resources, said it is now high time for farmers in the province to help protect, preserve and conserve the environment. “They can do this through the practice of organic farming,” he said. Lagbas has authored the “Institutionalizing Conservation Farming and Agroforestry Technology in the Province of Misamis Oriental,” an ordinance recently passed by the provincial board. The ordinance requires farmers in the province to practice conservation farming and avoid the use of chemical-based and synthetic farming inputs to help protect the environment. According to Lagbas, the use of chemical-based and synthetic inputs in farming, while having short-term beneficial effects on the crops, leaves long-term ill effects on the soil, and human and environmental health, since these chemicals seep into the soil and ultimately contaminate ground water, main source of our drinking supply. They also cause, if not exacerbate, soil erosion, air pollution, disruption of wildlife, and worsen the depletion of the country’s natural resources. Lagbas is also partnering with the Philippine Agrarian Reform Foundation for National Development (Parfund) Inc. in propagating and advocating pure organic-rice farming through the Integrated Rice-Ducks Farming System (IRDFS) in the province. Compared to conventional, chemical-based farming, the IRDFS is a completely organic way of growing rice at very minimal cost. Average harvest in a conventional, chemical-based farming per hectare of rice paddy is 3.9 metric tons (MT) of palay (unmilled rice). Production cost is also prohibitive, at almost P25,000 to P27,000 per hectare per cropping, said farmers in Valencia, Bukidnon and several rice-growing municipalities in Zamboanga del Sur interviewed by Parfund for a baseline data. But in IRDFS, production cost per hectare per cropping is a maximum of P14,000 and an average palay harvest of 5 to 5.5 MT. Highest harvest of palay using the IRDF system is 7.3 MT per hectare per cropping recorded at an IRDFS demonstration farm in Lagonglong, Misamis Oriental. Lagbas said he is very happy with the IRDFS because it directly hits environmental and agricultural concerns, particularly global warming and rice insufficiency. Aside from mitigating global warming and ensuring rice sufficiency, IRDFS farming also ensures a healthy-working condition in the farm as it completely eliminates the use of chemical-based farm inputs. “The system also provides additional income to the farmers through the sale of ducks, duck meat, duck eggs and balut,” he said. Through the IRDFS, Lagbas said, the province will not only provide the best intervention to the farmers by helping them elevate their economic status, but also help them become protectors of the environment. “We always talk of protecting the environment. We always talk of finding the best alternatives to rice importation. And here, we have this nongovernment organization that is already implementing a proven farming system that directly answers these two concerns. That is why I am also advocating and pushing for the implementation of this system here in the province,” he said in an interview with BusinessMirror in his office in the provincial capitol. Farmers, Save planet to save you!!!