Makato OTOP: Organic Rice Production

By Anghelda Baylon

The Department of Trade and Industry is pushing the One Town One Product (OTOP) as priority program of the government. In this connection and based on intelligent analysis and evaluation of the problems at hand by LGU-Makato headed by Mayor Ramon S. Legaspi, Jr., Makato agreed and implemented the Maunlad Supervised Organic Farming Project with organic rice as its OTOP.
However, continuous usage of chemical farm inputs for many decades not only left the soil depleted of organic matters but also almost totally eliminated the beneficial organisms that manufacture soil nutrient to keep the soil fertile. Chemicals also greatly contributed to environmental pollution causing global warming, erratic weather condition, abnormal season with no pattern resulting to ecological imbalance that oftentimes damage crops (plants, animals, fishes) the year round.
So, how can we produce organic rice from community of chemical addicts? Nature provides abundant beneficial organisms that manufacture balance soil nutrients to keep the soil fertile. Man has no use buying costly chemical inputs that kill beneficial organisms like earthworms and trillions of microorganisms that work day and night to produce balance soil nutrient for healthy crops. There are abundant biomass of rice straw and rice hulls right in the farm which rapidly decompose when applied with organic fertilizer, commercial or homemade from animal manure, chicken dung, vermicast and compost.
There are abundant herbs, fast growing plants to serve as growth hormone with balance major and trace elements for normal plant growth. Fruits of mango, banana, guava, and papaya have less market value at peak season but if processed by fermentation, dehydration and other processing methods will turn valuable inputs into organic rice for safer diet. Concoction of wild and fast growing herbs can keep crops healthy, attracting no pest as only inferior malnourished crops are attacked by pests for nature needs to eliminate unhealthy crops to keep man healthy.
Is it possible to quit using chemical farm inputs to survive? Yes!!! Progressive farmers successfully do it! They are earth friendly. They stopped using chemical farm inputs to survive for fear to go on polluting the earth until lives will perish.
But by simply adopting organic/natural farming systems technology in rice, farms cannot achieve sustainable organic rice production. For sustainable agriculture "unique skilled workers" with LGU officials are needed to produce real organic rice product. Better understanding of the situation like geography, topography, human resources and the present state of the environment are necessary. For producing organic rice does not involve only rice farmers but a competent body to coordinate and harmonize nature’s law and blend with proven technologies for every specific agro-ecologic zones.
Forest zones are strictly regulated to protect wildlife and watershed. The policies to safeguard, mitigate, conserve and prevent soil erosion and the attack of both plant pests and diseases must be implemented.
In rolling, marginal areas, the LGU Agricultural Services Force with Mayor Ramon Legaspi, Jr. must intensify the campaign to promote adoption of natural farming technologies like Integrated Farming Systems, Crop-Livestock Integration, Multi-Storey, Multi-Cropping, and others require the planting of permanent crops, agro-forest trees, fruit trees, perennial legumes as buffer to prevent soil erosion, serve as windbreak and shade to livestocks. Planting of green cover crops will provide sustainable organic materials like banana, mango and guava. It will also protect wild fast growing 15-herb bio-fertilizer/pesticide such as adgaw, lemon grass, palo china. Livestock raisers must produce forage grass and legumes like Napier, Guinea, Rensonnie, Flamingea , Ipil-ipil and Kakawate.
For lowland rainfed rice farms, farmers must practice crop rotation with mungbean after two successive rice crops to keep the soil nutrient balance, to improve organic matter content of the soil and to minimize growth of weeds./MP