Agriculture.ph Blog

GARDENING FOR BETTER ENVIRONMENT

The Cactus and Succulents Society of the Philippines will hold a pre-Christmas Garden Show & Bazaar at the Quezon Memorial Circle in Quezon City from November 20 to 30. Among those participating are Philippine Horticultural Society 1976, Fern and Nature Society, Philippine Orchid Society, Kapisanan ng mga Pinoy sa Sining ng Bonsai, and others.

PINOY AQUATICS FAIR

The 2nd Pinoy Aquatics Fair will be held at the Quezon Memorial Circle on Sept. 18 to 20 under the auspices of AANI in cooperation with DOST-PCAMRD, Fisheries Industry Group, Quezon City Government, Quezon Memorial Circle Administration, REEF Philippines
and others.

Goat meat project set

The development of a standard for goat meat cuts and value-added products from goat meat is the objective of a new project spearheaded by Alaminos Goat Farm (AGF) of Laguna and the Animal Products Development Center (APDC) of the Bureau of Animal Industry.

Rene Almeda, who operates AGF with sons Art and Toti, said that APDC is providing its facilities, manpower and expertise in slaughtering in its modern facilities in Marulas, Valenzuela City to come up with a standard for goat meat cuts. APDC will also develop smoked sausages from goat’s meat.

Research work would be undertaken to gather data in slaughtering Boer goats weighing 30 to 50 kilos which will be provided by the Alaminos Goat Farm. Almeda said that the dress weight percentage and the bone-to-meat ratio of the Boer goats would be recorded, and the results will be compared with the typical native goats slaughtered below 20 kilos.

Almeda said that Alaminos Goat Farm would like to show with the results of this project that the Boer breed could play a vital role in coming up with goat meat standards. He adds that the introduction of Boer bucks in upgrading the local herd to produce commercial goats for slaughter with a minimum weight of 30 kilos would go a long way for goat raisers to achieve the minimum standard size for slaughter.

Almeda adds that in Australia, Boer bucks were used to breed their feral goats to produce goat meat for export. Goat meat is considered as the red meat with lowest cholesterol content.

Written by Zac Sarian

Source: Manila Bulletin

Angara sponsors bill to develop idle farm lands, generate harvest

THE government can immediately address rural poverty by putting to good use arable lands in the provinces, Sen. Edgardo Angara suggested over the weekend.

Enlisting congressional support for the plan, Angara introduced Senate Bill 883, entitled Rural Employment Generation Act of 2007, which seeks to develop idle and underutilized agricultural lands to generate, he said, high-quality produce and employment for the rural population.

A former secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Angara pointed out that at least 5 million Filipinos in the rural sector are either unemployed or underemployed largely due to “the underutilization of agricultural lands in the country. At the same time, we are missing the opportunity of harvest.”

He proposed that the DA, as lead agency to implement this Act through the Rural Employment Generation Program, could convert a million hectares of unused lands into farms of hybrid corn, cassava and high-value commercial crops (HVCCs) in a period of two years.

“The program will integrate existing crop areas with idle prime lands into clusters of mechanized and irrigated farms, adopt modern crop production technologies, enhance farmers’ access to credit for their purchases and capital, provide training for farmers on innovations in postharvest mechanization and processing, and promote local capacity-building,” he said.

The senator added that a quality standard system will also be implemented on feed grain, vegetables, fibers, fruits and industrial crops to ensure their quality for consumption as well as better and competitive prices in the domestic market.

Noting that local farm produce has recently taken a slump in the market due to imported goods from neighboring Asian countries, Angara asserted that “this bill will boost our capability to produce high-quality crops.”

Under Angara’s bill, a joint committee between the government and the private sector will be created to facilitate both their active participation in the program, specifically in managing implementation of the program and identifying farmer-beneficiaries, credit channels and markets and service providers.

The bill will, likewise, provide for an Agricultural Development Fund of P5.55 billion for the first year and P4.1 billion for the second year of the program, to be taken from the budget of the DA. The program is then expected to generate rural employment valued at P10.35 billion and private-sector investments worth P10.6 billion.

“Not only are we maximizing the richness of our resources for healthy consumption; we are also creating jobs for millions of Filipinos in the provinces to keep them self-subsisting so they can build better lives. The core objective of this bill is to drastically reduce rural poverty,” he said.

Written by Butch Fernandez

Source: Business Mirror

DA, AFP to invest in rubber-plantation project

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are set to invest in a rubber-plantation project in Bukidnon to provide additional funds for soldiers’ training and acquisition of military equipment, among others.

In a statement, the DA said that, together with the AFP, it will convert a 10,000-hectare idle portion of the 42,000-hectare Kibaritan Military Reservation in Bukidnon into a corporate farm devoted to growing rubber with possible expansion up to 16,000 hectares.

The AFP initially estimated its investment in the project at P70 million spent over seven years of planting and plantation management.

“The pilot project, if found profitable, was envisioned to be a template in developing idle parts of wide areas of military properties from Luzon to Mindanao to raise funds to sustain the AFP’s integrated logistical requirements for training; morale and welfare of military personnel; acquisition and maintenance of mission-essential equipment; and showcase production technology for rubber and other agricultural crops. Moreover, the project is envisioned to provide sources of livelihood to settlers close or inside those reservations,” the DA said in a statement.

National Agribusiness Corp. (Nabcor) chairman and Agriculture Undersecretary Jess Paras said Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro earlier endorsed the joint project as an in-partner showcase to the peace-and-development efforts in Mindanao. Nabcor is one of the investment arms of the DA.

Paras said a memorandum of agreement between the DA and the AFP is already being finalized, and will be signed by the middle of September this year.

The Nabcor head instructed his technical people to join representatives of the AFP headquarters in Manila to jointly inspect the area to fine-tune the implementing guidelines under the plan and validate the projected-investment requirements and viability analysis made by the military brass.

Paras also ordered his people to find out the viability of multiple cropping with other cash crops, like corn and coffee, and the possibility of an engineering brigade based in Bukidnon to help in building access roads to the plantation and other facilities, like putting up an irrigation system.

A technical working group from the AFP and the DA, he said, has met four times and visited the proposed rubber plantation.

Soil samples from the first 1,000 hectares to be planted on in the first year of the project have been taken for analysis to determine if other crops, including corn, coffee and cassava, are suitable.

The inspection team also found that 16,000 hectares, out of the original 42,000-hectare reservation, have been awarded to agrarian-reform beneficiaries under certificates of land acquisition.

Part of the proposed plantation was also found to be cultivated by some farmers who had an agreement with the camp commander to make those idle patches productive while the government had no use for them.

In a dialogue with farmers, the project implementers told the temporary occupants that they will be taken in as workers as soon as the plantation work has been started.

Written by Cai U. Ordinario

Source: Business Mirror

Weather-sensitive crops thrive in demo farm

LEGAZPI CITY—Aquinas University of Legazpi (AUL) has implemented a project, dubbed “Urban Agriculture through the High-Value Commercial Crops Techno-Demo Farm” within its expansive campus here.

The project features a 60-square-meter greenhouse where vegetables highly sensitive to rain and changes in temperature like broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower and honeydew melon are being propagated.

Gardens for more hardy vegetables such as squash, eggplant and watermelon have also been established in an open area of 1,000 square meters which perimeters were planted to root crops like ube and sweet potato.

Cucumber and sweet corn are being intercropped with those plants during the dry season. A 5,000-square-meter farm for upland organic rice is also being established.

Adjacent to the demo farm, organic fertilizers will be produced soon through vermiculture using earthworms in the decomposition process of rice hull and coconut peat.

The first phase of the project started late last year with the establishment of a “techno-demo” farm in the Rawis Campus with a timetable of one year, after which it will be replicated on an expanded version in a larger property of the university in the upland village of Banquerohan, also here.

The replication will be the second phase of the project and is being supervised by Antonio Payonga of the Bicol University College of Agriculture and Forestry based in Guinobatan, Albay.

This phase would start before the end of the year and managed in such a way that it becomes self-sustaining.  The income derived from the sale of products will be plowed back to the project for continuous production. A part of the money will be saved for future expansion and development, Payonga said.

Vegetable production within the urban farm could be done continuously in a year with two or three cycles while upland organic rice and root crops will be produced once a year, he explained.

The demo farm is a project conceived by the Aquinas Center for Continuing Education (CCE) in response to the challenges of the prevailing food crisis felt with the dwindling supply of agricultural crops in the local market, Susan Cabredo, the CCE head, said.

The challenge is directed not only to the agriculture sector, but to all sectors of society, including academe, as the problem is exacerbated with the increases in prices of oil that directly affects food production and distribution, Cabredo said.

“Thus, it behooves academic institutions like AUL to transform from being mere consumers of food products to growers and suppliers, especially of high-value commercial crops, the technology of which could be shared with communities, particularly those in the urban areas,” she explained.

Related activities could also provide students in science, engineering and commerce hands-on experiences that dovetail classroom learning about state-of-the-art urban-farming technology. In fact, the AUL College of Business Administration has already prepared a business plan that would help the project earn revenue, Cabredo said.

Aside from alleviating poverty and improving the well-being of Legazpeños and Albayanos in the long-term, the project could also improve the quality of urban environment through “greening,” and thus help reduce pollution, she said.
Considering the university’s proximity, the demo farm could spur agro-tourism like the strawberry fields of La Trinidad, Benguet. It would also enhance or reinvigorate the entrepreneurial skills of the Aquinians while building stronger linkages with the communities it serves, Cabredo said.

AUL owns several parcels of land within the city, such as the downtown Political Science Campus, the Aquinas Peak in barangay Taysan and a vast agricultural estate in Banquerohan, among others. Close to the business district, the main campus in barangay Rawis is more than 30 contiguous hectares.

Written by Danny O. Calleja

Source: Business Mirror

FIELDS program, plus rainy weather, moves RP closer to rice self-sufficiency

FULL-blast operations of the FIELDS component of the GMA rice program, coupled with abundant rains, are seen to bolster a bumper harvest of rice this coming harvest season, starting next month.

FIELDS stands for Fertilizers, Irrigation and other rural infrastructure, Extension, Education and training for farmers, Loans, Dryers and other post-harvest facilities, and Seeds of the high- yielding varieties. It was launched in April last year when global rice prices started hitting historic highs.

Besides rice, the program covers corn, high-value crops, livestock and fisheries.

Barring any devastating typhoon going the way of four major rice-producing regions in Luzon and the Visayas and an El Niño-triggered drought in the Zamboanga Peninsula, rice harvests this year are seen to meet, if not surpass, the 17.48-million-ton forecast  harvests from 2.66 million hectares planted to rice this year.

This was the assessment made by Agriculture Undersecretary for Operations Jess Paras on the basis of the latest situation report to Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap earlier this week on the aggressive implementation of the FIELDS program in the rice sector by rice program director Frisco Malabanan.

“Based on current planting reports, certified seeds have already exceeded the 2008 wet-season performance and significant production gain is expected in Western Visayas, thus high-yield increment is expected,” Paras said.

There was also a marked increase in areas planted to rice during the main planting season as typhoons Dante, Emong and Feria brought in abundant rain, but made little devastations when they entered the country, he added.

An estimate made by the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics on the total area planted to rice was 2.66 million hectares, much higher than the 1.95 million hectares that yielded 7.4 million metric tons during the dry-season planting in the first half of the year.

Since last year, the DA had made it a major thrust the restoration of irrigation systems that have gone inefficient in past years, the building of postharvest facilities, particularly dryers, and the provision of hybrid-and inbred-rice seed at subsidized price to farmers.

Last year alone, deteriorated irrigation systems providing water to 24,430 hectares were rehabilitated, while totally dysfunctional irrigation canals were restored to irrigate 41,735 hectares. Records for this year on restoration and rehabilitation of old irrigation systems are yet to be consolidated.

Although the FIELDS program covers the whole country, higher incremental harvests on large swats of rice lands have been focused on the five largest rice-producing regions, namely, Central Luzon, the Bicol region, Cagayan Valley, the Ilocos-Pangasinan region and Zamboanga Peninsula.

The five regions supply more than half (60 percent) of the entire rice production in the Philippines.

Written by Jonathan L. Mayuga

Source: Business Mirror

Onion farmers’ group warns of lower production if smuggling remains unchecked

ONION farmers belonging to the Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magsisibuyas ng Nueva Ecija (Kasamne) warned that onion harvests by 2010 could go down if low prices continue to prevail due to the reported sale of a large volume of smuggled onions in the local market.

Kasamne chairman Rodolfo Niones projected that in Nueva Ecija alone, production could go down by as much as 40 percent as farmers will be discouraged from planting more of the produce.

The group projected that around 4 million bags could be harvested by April 2010, the peak harvest season for onions. The lean season is from June to December.

“Farmers are now about to start planting. If lower prices will prevail, they may turn to other crops than incur losses,” said Niones in a telephone interview.

The Kasamne chief noted that the warehouse price of red onions, for instance, is still at P32 per kilogram. This, he said, is just a “break-even” cost.

“Last year the warehouse price is at P55 per kilogram. It even went up to as high as P60 per kilogram,” said Niones in the vernacular.

In August Kasamne staged a rally at the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to appeal for government action on the reported sale in local markets of 2,500 metric tons (MT) of red onions from China.

The reported sale of smuggled onions depressed local prices as it increased local supply.

Niones disclosed that as of the last week of August, around 23.175 million kilos, or 23,175 MT, of red onions were in cold-storage facilities in Nueva Ecija. This inventory, he said, will be good until December.

Earlier, the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture (DA), said it has not yet issued any permits to any entity to import red onions.

BPI has also called on the BOC to step up its surveillance against smuggled onions.

Niones said the BOC has already held dialogues with farmers. During the dialogue, Kasamne asked the bureau to collar big-time onion smugglers.

Kasamne said if the government fails to act on the smuggling issue, it could spell the doom of the onion sector in the Philippines in view of the impending full implementation of a free-trade scheme among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) on January 1, 2010.

Under the Asean Free-Trade Area-Common Effective Preferential Treatment, tariffs for most farm products will go down to anywhere between 0 percen to 5 percent. Indonesia and Thailand are among the major producers of onion in Asean.

The Philippines produces mostly red onions in around 18,000 hectares of farmland. Kasamne said around 65 percent of onions comes from Nueva Ecija, 17 percent from Pangasinan, and 13 percent from the Ilocos region.

Other producers of onion in the country are Mindoro, Nueva Vizcaya and Tarlac.

Written by Jennifer A. Ng

Source: Business Mirror

Jica, DAR turn over P10.4-M graders to 8 Davao del Norte farming towns

THE Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) recently turned over graders worth P10.4 million to eight municipalities in Davao del Norte as part of the support-services program under the Mindanao Settlement Sustainable Development Project (Minssad).

A six-year project focusing on the development of settlement areas in Mindanao, Minssad is funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica).

The eight municipalities include Kalilangan, Pangantucan, Maramag from the Bukidnon settlement area; Bunawan, Veruela from Agusan del Sur settlement area 2; Laak from Davao del Norte settlement area 2; Cateel from Cateel settlement area; and San Jose from Surigao del Norte resettlement area 2.

The project in various provinces in Mindanao that was launched in 2003 is now 88.62-percent complete.

The project addresses the needs of farmer-beneficiaries in the settlement areas to gain access to rural infrastructure projects such as farm-to-market roads, livelihood potable water and other basic social services.

“With the strengthened teamwork of the DAR, foreign partners and local government units [LGUs], we continue to strive towards our goal of providing support services to empower our farmers to improve their farm productivity to eventually rise up to progress,” Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman said.

Under the equipment support component of Minssad, municipal LGUs are provided with equipment to strengthen their operational capability in the operation and maintenance (O&M) of all completed rural infrastructure. The O&M equipment package is composed of dump trucks, graders, pay loaders, backhoes and road rollers.

Jica project formulation officer Akiro Goto expressed his high hopes that the equipment given will be used to sustain and help preserve all the infrastructure turned over to them.

“Jica helps in the realization of the vision to minimize poverty to the fullest in the depressed areas in Southern Philippines through our strong partnership with DAR. I put my confidence to all the recipients that the equipment will be utilized to benefit not only the farmers, but also the constituents of all municipalities,” Goto said.

Written by Jonathan L. Mayuga

Source: Business Mirror

Aquinas U promotes urban agri-technology in demo gardens

LEGAZPI CITY—Aquinas University of Legazpi (AUL) has implemented a project, dubbed “Urban Agriculture through the High-Value Commercial Crops Techno-Demo Farm,” within its expansive campus here.

The project features a 60-square-meter greenhouse where vegetables highly sensitive to rain and changes in temperature like broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower and honeydew melon are being propagated.

Gardens for more hardy vegetables such as squash, eggplant and watermelon have also been established in an open area of 1,000 square meters whose perimeters were planted to root crops like ubi and sweet potato.

Cucumber and sweet corn are being intercropped with those plants during the dry season. A 5,000-square-meter farm for upland organic rice is also being established.

Adjacent to the demo farm, organic fertilizers will be produced soon through vermiculture using earthworms in the decomposition process of rice hull and coconut peat.

The first phase of the project started late last year with the establishment of a “techno-demo” farm in the Rawis Campus with a time table of one year, after which it will be replicated on an expanded version in a larger property of the university in the upland village of Banquerohan, also here.

The replication will be the second phase of the project and is being supervised by Antonio Payonga of the Bicol University College of Agriculture and Forestry based in Guinobatan, Albay.

This phase would start before the end of the year and managed in such a way that it becomes self-sustaining.  The income derived from the sale of products will be plowed back to the project for continuous production. A part of the money will be saved for future expansion and development, Payonga said.

Vegetable production within the urban farm could be done continuously in a year with two or three cycles, while upland organic rice and root crops will be produced once a year, he explained.

The demo farm is a project conceived by the Aquinas Center for Continuing Education (CCE) in response to the challenges of the prevailing food crisis felt with the dwindling supply of agricultural crops in the local market, Susan Cabredo, CCE head, said.

The challenge is directed not only to the agriculture sector, but to all sectors of society, including academe, as the problem is exacerbated with the increases in prices of oil that directly affects food production and distribution, Cabredo said.

“Thus, it behooves academic institutions like AUL to transform from being mere consumers of food products to growers and suppliers, especially of high-value commercial crops, the technology of which could be shared with communities, particularly those in the urban areas,” she explained.

Related activities could also provide students in science, engineering and commerce hands-on experiences that dovetail classroom learning about state-of-the-art urban-farming technology. In fact, the AUL College of Business Administration has already prepared a business plan that would help the project earn revenue, Cabredo said.

Aside from alleviating poverty and improving the well-being of Legazpeños and Albayanos in the long term, the project could also improve the quality of urban environment through “greening,” and thus help reduce pollution, she said.

Considering the university’s proximity, the demo farm could spur agro-tourism, like the strawberry fields of La Trinidad, Benguet. It would also enhance or reinvigorate the entrepreneurial skills of the Aquinians while building stronger linkages with the communities it serves, Cabredo said.
AUL owns several parcels of land within the city, such as the downtown Political Science Campus, the Aquinas Peak in barangay Taysan and a vast agricultural estate in Banquerohan, among others. Close to the business district, the main campus in barangay Rawis is more than 30 contiguous hectares.

Written by Danny O. Calleja

Source: Business Mirror