LAGAWE, IFUGAO – -Ifugao has been ranked strongly in the promotion of organic farming in the regional and national levels.
Over the years, this upland Cordillera province has produced not just a few “achievers” in elevating organic farming into greater heights.
Small wonder, Ifugao is sending a high-level delegation to the Regional Planning Workshop on the 2020 to 2022 Plans for Organic Agriculture Program.
The all-important activity is scheduled to be conducted from April 4 to 6 at the Golden Berries Hotel in Tabuk City.
When measured qualitatively, Ifugao has achieved the national government’s goal of increasing productivity among farmers.
In fact, in the last three or so years Ifugao’s organic farming has attracted the attention of highly-placed government officials for its worth.
Analysts placed Mayoyao as the hub of organic farming in the province. Organic farmers have a strong presence in Alfonso Lista, Aguinaldo, Banaue, Lamut, Hingyon, Kiangan and Asipulo towns.
Just like 2016, analysts have pointed out that 2017 has been a challenging year for organic farmers in Ifugao.
Nonetheless, some of them are still operating at a loss, a situation still unchanged in many years.
Apparently top Department of Agriculture (DA) officials in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) are now setting their sights on 2020 and 2022. Coincidentally, these are the last two years of the tenure of President Rodrigo Duterte.
“Agriculture is still the dominant industry in Ifugao and throughout the Cordillera Administrative Region. Factors influencing productivity of tillers affected the lives of organic farmers and their beneficiaries, which underscored the need to carefully plan programs and projects for the agriculture sector in the coming years, particularly the period covering the period of 2020 to 2022,” a second district Board Member said.
He added that the all-out support of Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piòol has motivated and inspired the province’s organic farmers to strive harder in their farm lots.
Ifugao’s hardworking organic farmers need to further improve significantly their annual crop yield to bring the province’s aggregate tally at par with others in the CAR and elsewhere.
The farm production of Ifugao has to grow dramatically for it to catch up with its neighbors in the CAR thus, attaining a “better status” in the not-so-distant future. Perhaps, in such eventuality, catching up with the leader on the ladder so to speak is not far-fetched, where Kalinga province is in right now.
This early, the output of the Ifugao delegation at the workshop expectedly will make stakeholders effective in helping improve crop production, in particular, and lives of Filipinos through farming sans the use of pesticides, herbicides and other harmful substances, in general.
Vegetables are planted by organic farmers, although rice primarily is the main cash crop of workers in this vital sector. Various items of organically-raised vegetables became popularly available in major supermarkets in Metro Manila and other urban centers in recent times. The fine and smooth textures of the skin of a tomato as well as its aromatic smell are some of the dazzling qualities of organic vegetables.
Ifugao delegation’s support gives the workshop’s organizers a major boost in their efforts to ensure the successful staging of this undertaking.
The workshop is expected to invigorate participants of the host city’s agriculture infrastructure with the wealth of experience of Kalinga in planning and development. Kalinga has the highest crop production in the CAR.
The paradigm of development of organic farming is evolving to provide greater emphasis on the pressing needs of practitioners based on pragmatic approaches grounded on prevailing conditions on circumstances or situations in each province, giving municipal agriculture officers the most comprehensive information about farmers’ status.
What the CAR badly needs is to create portals where databases of the six provinces and two cities (a highly-urbanized and a component one) can connect and relate to another. It is vital to know what is planted where and what failures and successes were recorded where. After all, they are supposedly working on the same page thus, united in the battle cry “We are Organic!”
Fact of the matter is that if you speak of the nationally-known Tabuk rice, you’d be hard-pressed to find when there is no “Banaue rice” when you herald the world-famous Banaue Rice Terraces. Well, something is wrong somewhere in the mindset of Ifugao folks.
The workshop, which envisages addressing major needs of organic farmers by providing them immediate and full support and assistance at all times, is interconnected within the land-locked, impoverished CAR. Henceforth, feeling the pulses of the sun baked farmers is so important. For one, it would be useless to think of 2020 to 2022 and way beyond, if provision of training and capacity-building programs for cash-strapped farmers is not considered.
Other must-do actions are related to construction of post-harvest facilities and irrigation systems as well as extension of better credit and marketing lines. It’s better to modernize the province’s agriculture in the long run. No ifs and buts!
It’s important that Ifugao farmers to enhance and establish connectivity with the agriculture modernization program of the Philippine government. Farm modernization is really the way forward.
Sadly, policymakers and officials in the provincial and municipal levels are largely less in thrall to insensitivity on farmers’ wants to rather more realistic consideration of the mounting demand for increased budgetary allocation in the agriculture sector.
Fortunately, in Ifugao the Provincial Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Office (PAENRO) for the last three years has a track record of improving the plight of farmers with strong success. It has been working hand-in-hand with countless farmers since its inception until now. Its biggest core competence is building positive and interactive relationships on the ground- with farmers, fisher folks and their families or loved ones.
It is ultimately hoped that the workshop participants, who are adept in handling all-related issues, are ever-committed to helping organic farmers respond to the challenges of effecting changes in the agriculture sector. **By Anthony A. Araos
