Pro-farmer organic agriculture pushed

ILOILO CITY, Philippines — "Organic agriculture can be a potent tool for rural development if organic products are geared first towards local food security," according to Dr. Chito Medina, national coordinator of the Magsasaka at Siyentipiko para sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura (MASIPAG).

Medina led a group of farmers and scientists all over the country in calling for a "genuine pro-farmer and development-oriented organic agriculture" during a farmers-scientists conference held at the Central Philippine University in this city recently.

At least 170 farmer leaders attended the national conference to address the issues on organic farming and push for the important role of small-scale farmers and their organizations in the implementation of organic agriculture.

The participants expressed high hopes that the passage of Republic Act 10068 (Organic Agriculture Act) will boost organic agriculture in the country, but were concerned over the non-inclusion in the law of some vital items.

The law states that "the government recognizes and supports the central role of the farmers, indigenous peoples and other stakeholders at the grassroots in this program," but the farmers said it missed the significant role of sustainable, organic farming in rural development.

The overall tone of the law is directed to produce organic products for export, instead of addressing the pressing issue of food security and sufficiency in the country, they said.

Medina said the growth of organic agriculture has many impediments, citing many DA personnel, including agriculture extension workers under the LGUs were not yet convinced of its importance. "Even if they are convinced, the government has no substantial technologies that can be disseminated," he said.

Farmers, people's organizations and NGOs are the ones who have developed and are practicing proven organic agriculture technologies. "The organic agriculture program is negated by contrary programs of the DA like balanced fertilization, chemical farming and fertilizer subsidies, and worse, the promotion of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)," Medina said. 

Medina complained that the present organic agriculture system does not concentrate on making food production sustainable. "The dominant thinking among government personnel is simply input substitution, chemical fertilizer to organic fertilizer, pesticide with botanical pesticide, and the like. In soil fertility management, the prevailing approach is to distribute shredders and African night crawlers (earthworms). This vermi-compost mentality is often highly centralized, that farmers still have to buy the vermi-compost and vermi-casts, which eclipsed many other fertility management technologies," he said.

While many small-scale farmers have been clamoring for support for their organic farming, the organic agriculture fund has a low utilization rate for the past three years. "This may be because most government employees are project-implementation oriented, ending up strengthening the bureaucracy rather than the farmer practitioners," said Medina.

He also pointed that most qualified trainers are organic practitioners themselves, thus trainings should give more emphasis on the farmer practitioners to teach other farmers. "Cross-site visits to the farms of organic farmers are more effective than trainings conducted away from the farm," Medina added.

MASIPAG is a farmer-led network of people's organizations, NGOs and scientists working to develop sustainable, organic systems for livestock conservation, products processing and local marketing. As of 2010, it has 518 member-peoples' organizations, 47 church-based groups, 33 NGOs and 15 scientist-partners.  (FREEMAN)