Kape kag Isyu Aug. 9, 2014
You want to save the environment and promote public health, go organics.
ILOILO CITY --
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| L-R: Ogatis, Melliza, Panerio, Jimenea, Gaton and Palomar. |
That’s the message of four officers of the Department of Agriculture – Region 6 at the Kape kag Isyu this morning.
By adopting organic farming, advocates hit at least two birds with a single stone: one, they help cushion the impact of climate change and two, they also beef up people’s resistance to diseases.
The four resource persons – DA regional information officer Juvy Gaton, Andrew Palomar, Medifel Panerio and James Ogatis – also announced the holding of a “2nd Regional Organic Agriculture Summit” here August 11-15.
Iloilo Provine has some 1,400 hectares listed in the coverage of organic farming with the towns of Zarraga and New Lucena considered “outstanding”, that is, their respective local governments officially pushing for it. For example, New Lucena town, has enacted measures regulating advertisements of agri-chemicals.
The Iloilo provincial agriculture office targets at least five percent of the Iloilo’s 240,000 hectares farmlands in the program launched in 2006.
Western Visayas has some 12,000 hectares into organic farming, with Negros Occidental at the top. The region also includes the provinces of Iloilo, Capiz, Aklan, Antique and Guimaras.
Chemical-dependent farming releases greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that deplete the ozone layer. It also destroys the soil, depleting its organic communities and nutrients, thus reduces the water-holding capacity of the ground surface that exposes the environment to drought and erosion, says Gaton. By reverting to organic farming, the soil is enriched and its capacity to store water is enhanced. The more water the ground has, the cooler it gets.
Humans ingest “chemical residues” as they consume farm products treated with chemical sprays and fertilizer. Panerio says that diseases like cancer spread fast in communities that consume these produce.
If we don’t spray our crops with chemicals we might harvest nothing, farmers might contend.
But Palomar assured farmers: “If our farms have harmful insects, there are at least three friendly predators per insect pest that protect our crops.”
He added that the DA has training programs that teach farmers how to concoct their own pesticides extracted from plants. He cites the common trees “madre de cacao” and neem which drive away, even kill, worms, stem borers and hoppers.
DA technicians also teach farmers how to make mechanical traps that attract and kill fruit flies, or a combination of traps and concoctions for the same purpose. For example, neem leaves fermented with molasses in bottles attract fruit flies and hoppers which fall and drown in the concoction once inside the bottle.
Why does DA-6 still promote the exact opposite of organic farming?
Corn farming, especially the one promoted by giant-agrichem Monsanto USA, incidentally also flourishes in Iloilo, particularly in its northern towns. The technology entails denuding entire slopes and hills, wiping out traditional vegetation by using herbicides, as farmers are enticed into corn mono-cropping.
This writer pointed out to the resource persons the “other side” of the DA which promotes that destructive technology, to be more precise, with DA personnel doubling as sales agents of agri-chems, the most notorious being Monsanto which aggressively promote BT corn in northern Iloilo.
The resource persons admit that.
Gaton: “That’s the irony. Products banned elsewhere in the world are welcomed in the Philippines.”
Panerio: “That practice will eventually disappear as people convert to organic farming.”
Palomar: “We now can feel its destructive outcome”
Iloilo Province in 2004 enacted a resolution adopting the propagation of “open pollinated” yellow corn, not the hybrid one, particularly, BT corn that Monsanto USA produces.
Entire hills, steep slopes are shorn of vegetation as farmers spray them with “Round UP” or similar herbicides. The chemical loosens the top soil making it susceptible to erosion and slide.
Panerio noted that the mini-dam in San Dionisio, Iloilo gets heavily silted and now needs yearly rehabilitation to clear it of sludge and to repair its structure as floods during the rains are heavy with mud which made them fiercer. The creeks and ditches of the town easily dry up as vegetation on the slopes is gone.
Worse, despite bumper yields, farmers are still trapped in debts as profits from the corn industry are concentrated in the hands of traders and usurers.
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