The Organic Change
All this change is the product of a gradual revolution taking place in Sagbayan, Alicia, Dagohoy, Carmen, and San Isidro: five of the rice-growing towns of interior Bohol. In as many barangays in these towns people’s organizations are implementing the PROFarmS project together with their partner NGO proponents. In the barangays of San Antonio and Poblacion, in the towns of Sagbayan and San Isidro, respectively, the Bohol Local Development Foundation (BLDF) is headlining this organic revolution.
PROFarmS stands for Poverty Reduction through Organic Farming Systems. It is funded mainly through the Philippines-Australia Community Assistance Program (PACAP) with the support of the NGO proponents and the municipal governments of the towns where the project is situated.
The project teaches the use of sustainable agriculture technologies to farmers and involves the extensive use of vermiculture, rapid composting, and herbal composites, among other methods. It also involves the creativity of the individual farmers employing these technologies since many of them have modified by practical application the methods taught to them to further maximize their yield and minimize costs.
Farmers from the partner people’s organizations in San Antonio, Sagbayan and Poblacion, San Isidro testify to how the project has liberated their finances from the restrictive costs of commercial fertilizers and chemical pesticides and herbicides. They also testify to how their land has been restored to their natural condition and fertility, in contrast to accounts of some farmers who have experienced dying crops from years of unrelenting use of chemical fertilizers.
The project itself is supported by its own marketing and distribution arm that makes their organic products available to the public. Thankfully, this agricultural revolution is progressively matched by a growing awareness of the consuming public of the importance of and the reasons for going organic.