Lip service for environment
The farmer is invaluable not only in food production but in the country’s fight and survival against global warming, as well.
Please view the photos below. They have a story to tell on the piece of land where they are taken.
About five kilometers from the poblacion of Igbaras, Iloilo, this farmland once was a marginal piece. Years of dependence on chemical inputs wrecked its productivity. It yielded an average of 12 bags of palay yearly. It is rain-fed, that is, it grows rice only during the rains.
In 1995, the couple owning it rewrote its history; they converted the “bantud” or higher portions into an orchard of fruit and industrial trees, mainly, mangoes.
They developed their organic fertilizer, mainly from dried leaves and animal dung steeped in drums of water for months. The concoction worked to raise their harvest more than three-fold despite the decrease in the paddies. The liquid fertilizer reduced their dependence on chemical inputs. They also produced “indigenous microorganism” (IMO), by fermenting spoiled crack rice in maskubado sugar, which they mixed with their liquid fertilizer to enhance its potency.
Over the years, the changes are conspicuous: compared to other farms, the farm is cooler due to its trees. It revived its top soil, making the land more fertile and increasing its capacity to store rainfall.
Under the mini-forest floor are dry leaves and twigs and animal dung left to decompose, supporting the the population of micro-communities – worms, bugs, ants – which repaid the favour by serving as food for their masters’ poultry. Rat population might have increased but it is kept controlled by snakes and monitor lizard attracted by the vegetation. (Neighboring farmers occasionally harvest the python and “halo” with their consent, of course. Among the birds that settled in the farm are the “tikling”, a shore bird that migrated to the mountains of Igbaras, Iloilo, and the “taguksuk”, a member of the cuckoo family that hunts on rodents especially rats nesting on trees and bamboo clumps.
An article from Novosti Press hails earthworms for slowing down climate change: they convert wastes into compost and burrow tiny tunnels in the ground making the top soil porous and increasing its capacity to store water, in effect, cushioning the land against drought. We can say that not just earthworms, but the communities of microscopic animals as earlier mentioned – ants, worms, bugs, etc. – also speed up decomposition of wastes and increase the porosity of the land.
If you are raising range poultry, you can save much on feeds because the farm, especially, the portion beneath the bed of decomposting leaves, have living food for your birds.
By enhancing the land’s “water-harvesting” capacity, global warming is mitigated, at least in that tiny part of Igbaras, Iloilo. Water, the lack of it, lies at the core of concerns arising on global warming so much so that we now hear of future wars igniting, no longer from oil, but water.
View the pictures here below. They are taken during the Semana Santa (Holy Week) 2014, peak of the dry season. While neighboring farms parched from the heat, while grasses there wilted, the farm where these photos were taken had lush overgrowth and greeneries to feed its animals and wildlife.
While neighboring paddies dry up and the soil have cracks wide enough to trip a calf over, those inside the farm where these greeneries thrive, are moist. In fact, under the canopies of the mango trees where the soil is blanketed by dry leaves, the soil is still wet during April, 2014.
If you are raising range poultry, you save much on feeds because the farm, especially, the portion beneath the bed of decomposing leaves, is a mine field of insects to feed your birds with.
Water, the lack of it, lies at the core of concerns arising from global warming and it considered so important that we often hear of future wars being ignited, no longer by oil, but water.
Government must have recognized the crucial role that farming, the Filipino farmer in particular, play in the fight against Global Warming. It enacted many laws recognizing that, like Republic Act 9729 or the Climate Change Act of 2009, RA 6716 or the Rainwater Collection Act and RA 10068 or Organic Agriculture Act of 2010.
The first calls for “mainstreaming climate change in government policy formulation” and the second the “construction of water wells, rainwater collectors, development of springs and rehabilitation of water wells in all barangays in the Philippines.”
RA 10068, as the name suggests mandates the implementation and research on earth-friendly farming practices eventually doing away with harmful technologies like dependence on chemical and toxic inputs.
All three laws above affirm the pivotal role of farming, the Pinoy farmer in particular, in keeping this part of the world ecologically healthy.
But wait: it appears that government has a pair of hands one of which undermines what the other does.
The Rainwater Act or RA 6716 was passed on March 17, 1989 yet. Establishing dug wells in all barangays increases the land’s ability to “harvest” rainwater but the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), mandated as “lead agency” to implement that and the Congress to provide funds for that have been asleep throughout those years.
Government instead acts like a spoiled brat advocating the construction of megadams that works to the contrary. Aside from condemning us in a debt trap, megadams precipitate climate change. Vietnam, the world’s major rice producer has none of that, preferring instead, the time tested “small water impounding projects” or SWIPs.
Government seeks to “mainstream” climate change in its policy formulations pursuant to RA 9729 but is acting as “bugaw-in-chief” in liberalizing the country's mineral deposits and forests for open plunder by giant foreign and local companies. It also gleefully jumps head over heels approving the construction of coal-fired power plants tagged by environmentalists among the top major destroyers of the earth from the mining of coal to its burning to produce electricity, and to the disposition of its ash.
Government in words seek to promote organic farming pursuant to RA 10068 but in practice, it is stacked with apparatchiks from the Department of Agriculture (DA) serving as sales agents of giant foreign agri-chem companies promoting GMO corn and toxic pesticides.
Yours truly have attended for media coverage local and national “congresses” on mangoes and corn. What attracted our attention were the conspicuous booths of these corporations full of giveaways for participants and guests – glossy reading materials, t-shirts, pens, caps, food, and samples of their products.
Why are they allowed space in the venues in the first place? I learned later they were co-sponsors and providers of vehicles to ferry participants in post seminar tours.
These giant companies, like the proverbial bagpiper, offer freebees—food, wine and women – junkets included, to buy public officials so to sell their poisonous technologies to our farmers.
Government's advocacy is mere lip service.
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