Agri dep't to focus on organic farming

CEBU – The Department of Agriculture will no longer continue its subsidy program for fertilizer and instead realign its funds for capacity building programs to support farmers to shift to organic farming.

DA Secretary Arthur Yap said that in the last 18 months of the Arroyo administration, the DA will focus its funding on capacity building programs for farmers to advance organic farming in the Philippines.

Yap said that starting next year, the intensified organic farming will focus on providing organic fertilizer manufacturing support to farmers tilling 400,000 hectares or 10 percent of the estimated four million hectares of Palay fields nationwide beginning.

The new system shall cover all the DA farm productivity programs that support the Arroyo’s centerpiece food security agenda dubbed as FIELDS or Food, Irrigation and other rural infrastructure, Education and extension work, Loans, Dryers and other post harvest facilities and Seeds.

Yap said that the DA budget will only concentrate on hard infrastructure programs such as irrigation maintenance and post harvest facilities and will not give on soft projects like fertilizer support to achieve long term effects.

Next year, DA will be shifting fertilizer support to balance fertilization. Farm communities will be encouraged to go into organic agriculture and organic fertilization before the DA will assist them on capacity building to help them produce their own fertilizers rather than buying petrochemical fertilizers.

Meanwhile, Yap said DA has created output monitoring teams to tighten the monitoring system and fund disbursement system of FIELDS projects.

This is part of the continuing efforts to guarantee the prudent release of funds to DA’s program partners such as the Local Government Units, Non-Government Organizations and People’s Organizations as well as to ensure that government assistance reach the intended farmer beneficiaries.

Earlier, Yap also issued DA guidelines providing for a more thorough evaluation and monitoring of FIELDS projects to avoid another lapses in the DA programs as included in the findings of the Commission on Audit on its 2007 report. – Jessica Ann R. Pareja/JMO (THE FREEMAN)