DA 7: Organic Farmers Face ‘Big Challenges’

A top official of the regional office of the Department of Agriculture (DA)7 on Wednesday revealed the challenge faced by the members of the Regional Organic Agriculture Chamber (ROAC) in the future.

DA7 Regional Executive Director Angel Enriquez, during the first Regional Organic Agriculture Chamber assembly recently held at a hotel in Mandaue City, encouraged the participants to finalize the roadmap on organic agriculture to guide all DA stakeholders in preparation of future challenges.

There were at least 70 farmers and practitioners in the region was challenged by Director Enriquez to achieve the national target using the roadmap as their guide to ensure their accomplishments.

It was revealed by Director Enriquez that one of the major challenges faced by the farmers nowadays is the national target to convert five percent of their total agricultural land area into organic agriculture by 2016.

This means, that of the more than 500,000 hectares of agricultural land in Central Visayas, five percent or 26,000 hectares would be tilled to organic trend of agriculture, Enriquez said.

But sad to note she stressed, that there are only around 3,000 hectares at this point in time are devoted to organic farming, making the region short of about more or less 23,000 hectares of organic farm to achieve the national target.

A ROAC member from Bohol identified as Marisa Tuazon, at the same time passed the challenged to all other farmers in Bohol to help her in maintaining the supply of organic rice in Bohol.

She said the province has a current feeding program which utilizes organic products such as rice, but are at times short of the demand.

According to Tuazon, there is a need to have a stable supply of organic rice not only in Bohol but likewise to other areas in the country and this is another challenge which apparently needs other farmers in the region’s help.

But Tuazon’s challenge was answered by another ROAC member from Siaton, Negros Oriental identified as Wilberto Castillo, who said that his vision to keep up and vitalize the organic farming set up in his own town, is being hampered by the rapid conversion of organic lands to sugarlands and germelina plantation, which he considered as a big hindrance in boosting the organic agriculture in that particular part of the region.

Castillo, DA’s organic agriculture (OA), alternate focal person, stressed another aggravating challenge he has seen, is the threat of climate change and the conversion of agricultural lands to residential and commercial purposes.

However despite of these challenges ,Castillo pointed out that five percent of farmers are now adopting organic agriculture and more farmers are found to be receptive to organic farming which may help in the attainment of the target.

Likewise in Bohol,wherein ten percent of the farmer population who were trained on organic farming were supported by the local government units which basically a big help for the organic farming achievements. With all these challenges, Director Enriquez explained that the region has its overall capacity to be strong enough as a springboard for a successful implementation of organic agriculture in Central Visayas.