Pamela Fernandez shares on Facebook that "Towns and cities in the (Philippines) are now mandated by law to practice organic farming." I click the link, and I find that it was Interior Secretary Eduardo Año who issued a memorandum on 20 May 2019 yet: "All local chief executives are directed to become members of the LOAMCP-PH[1]." The LOAMCP-PH is the League of Organic Agriculture Municipalities, Cities, and Provinces of the Philippines. This is all good news to me, as I am a believer in the Department of Agriculture, DA, under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie who assumed office 5 months ago. And I have been a believer in organic farming since more than 50 years ago, but it intrigues me that the DILG is more active in promoting organic agriculture than the DA itself?
In fact, if you look back to the image above (from the Asean Post[2]), you will see that:
The organic farming share of total farmland in Southeast Asia, dated 2017, is dismally low!
Philippines 1.61%, Vietnam 0.53%, Thailand 0.41%, Indonesia 0.36%, Lao PDR 0.32%, Cambodia 0.20%, Myanmar 0.08%, Malaysia 0.01%. Southeast Asia is a non-believer in organic farming?! Nobody is talking about why, so I will now be.
Is low ambition the reason for the low performance? In their long report "Organic Farming In The PHL: Leafing Behind A Chemical Future," Jasper Emmanuel Y Arcalas, VG Cabuag & Dominique Nathanielle M Muli of BusinessMirror say that our National Organic Agriculture Program, NOAP, has the target of converting 5% of total farmlands into organic farms[3]. Today, NOAP can report only 2%.
For the disappointing rate of adoption of organic farming in Southeast Asia I think I can give 3 reasons:
(1) Insistence on organic certification, which is very expensive.
(2) Insistence on organic fertilizer, which is good but not good enough.
(3) Yield is lower.
It takes years, plural, to receive the Good Agricultural Practices, GAP, certification, because "it takes years to rehabilitate soil from chemicals" – Farm Manager Leni M Rebutiaco of Leonie Agri Corp whose GAP-certified farm is in Bulacan. That means even if you stop your chemical farming now, traces of the chemicals you previously applied on the crops or soil will persist for years. Your farm cannot be certified until then.
There is the expensive certification. Vera Ysabel V Dela Cruz, a staff of the Bureau of Agriculture and Fisheries Standards, the certifying body, says the cost is P100,000 to P160,000.
In other words, to become rich, a farmer has to become rich first!
Even if PH subsidized the cost, the yield is still lower. I say that is because of the reliance on organicfertilizers. Instead, they should be building the richness of the soil the natural way – which I say is the real essence of organic agriculture. And who am I saying that? Ask Nicky Perlas, the Filipino winner of the "Alternative Nobel" Right Livelihood Award – I taught him organic agriculture in 1968 when nobody was looking!@517
[1]https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1087906
[2]https://theaseanpost.com/article/organic-farming-southeast-asia
[3]https://businessmirror.com.ph/2019/08/22/organic-farming-in-the-phl-leafing-behind-a-chemical-future/
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