The Sagbayan PROFarmS Experience
The couple has two sons, one in high school and the other in grade school, and are among the farmers who, in the conversion of their lands, went straight to fully organic farming systems, readily convinced that there was no reason to stick to commercial fertilizers and chemicals. Most of the SAOFA members followed the gradual adoption of organic farming that the project recommended.
In the past three years, the project has taken the members of the people’s organization to other places where organic farming is being practiced, such as the FOCAS project sites in the town of Bilar, among other sites. The project has also given them the opportunity to attend seminars and demonstrations of sustainable agricultural practices.
Before they were introduced to PROFarmS, Vic-vic observed that their crops were dying and that they were harvesting less and less from commercial fertilizers. She adds “Daghang bation sa among lawas (We felt unhealthy),” from consuming the food they produced with inorganic chemicals.
For some of SAOFA’s members, though, they were not in the same dire situation. Their harvests were reasonably profitable, in spite of the relentless increase of the cost of chemical fertilizers. Their reality was that they had to feed their families and they could not afford to risk their harvests on the unknowns that organic farming presented. For them, farming with toxic, inorganic chemicals was also simpler as they would not have to procure or process their own organic fertilizer or composite. These were the reasons why it was much more of a struggle for them to adopt sustainable agriculture than it was for Vic-vic and other members like her.
Harvests dropped in the first year that they adopted organic farming for some farmers but they are unanimous in saying that, thereafter, their harvests have gradually risen to quantities comparable to when they were still using commercial fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. An added plus is that in place of the money for each sack of commercial fertilizer that they used to buy, they now spend next to nothing for organic fertilizers and composites that they make themselves or buy at such prices that even P200 is enough for a good-sized farm.
For Vic-vic, her family’s experience has been even better than most. Their half-hectare that usually yielded 20 sacks of unhusked rice now yields an average of 30 sacks each harvest season. Where she used to spend P5,000, mostly for commercial fertilizers, she now only spends about P1,000 for labor when planting and harvesting. They employ rapid composting, vermiculture, and oriental herbal nutrients, apply carbonized rice hulls, chicken dung, goat and carabao manure to the soil, and use plants that have pesticidal and herbicidal qualities. Their application of organic farming methods extends to their vegetable garden, to root crops, and to the pigs, goats, and chickens that they raise on their farm. They keep ducks to check the population of snails in the paddies. They grow ubi in sacks filled with rice straw. They practice rattooning with their rice crop. And during the dry season, when they plant corn, they alternate the rows of corn with rows of legumes to help restore the soil’s fertility. Her family mirrors those of other members of SAOFA who have been won over by organic farming.
Like some of her fellow members in SAOFA, Vic-vic proudly shows her organic farm to both friends and neighbors and readily demonstrates for them, hoping to convince them of the necessity and the many benefits of sustainable agriculture; hoping to see more farmers adopting organic farming in her barangay of San Antonio and, yes, in her town of Sagbayan.