Only 10% of farmers into organic farming

SAMAL, Bataan: About 90 percent of the total number of farmers in the country is still dependent on the expensive imported inorganic fertilizers with only a little over 10 percent practicing organic farming, a leader of a nongovernmental organization said over the weekend.

Anthony Gutierrez, project manager of the Institute for Philippines Cooperatives & Social Enterprises Development, said that only a small percentage citing Department of Agriculture figures that only 10 percent to 15 percent of 6 million farmers in the country are adopting or sold to the idea of going into organic farming.

But he said that the 60,000 farmers are good enough as starter. He said that when the project was started years ago, only 3 percent of farmers in Mindanao and Southern Luzon practiced the use of compost as fertilizers.

“We are here to teach and help farmers both in the lowland and upland develop their old, old and long-time tradition of farming which is basically organic farming,” Gutierrez said.

Anneli Leina, country director of the Swedish Cooperative Center, said they have funded the organic farming project in the Philippines for P30-million that will last for three years.

She said that Bataan is the 10th area in the country they have chosen to
implement the program.

Leina said they have similar projects in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Vietnam and Africa.

The cooperative center of Sweden, a nongovernment organization, in partnership with the Institute for Philippines Cooperatives & Social Enterprises Development, held a one-day seminar for farmers in Barangay (Village) San Juan, Samal, Bataan.

In here, provincial Board member Gaudencio Ferrer, one of the resource speakers, explained how the continuous application of inorganic fertilizers and use of chemical pesticide and insecticide destroys the soil and the environment.

A group of farmers demonstrated the preparation of organic fertilizers with mixtures of rice bran, sawdust and other wastes that they said cost only P200 a sack as compared to more than P1,100 a bag of the widely-used commercial urea fertilizer.
ERNIE B. ESCONDE

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