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Five thousand trees mark PhilRice’s silver anniversary |
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Written by The Web Team
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Friday, 16 July 2010 |
 To mark PhilRice’s 25th year, the Institute planted more than 5,000 trees nationwide in a week-long activity, which started in July 5.
Dubbed as 25 Years and Twenty-five Hundred Trees, the tree planting activity exceeded its initial target of 2,500 trees.
The activity was led by the Association of PhilRice Employees (APE), through the initiative of its president, Joy Bartolome Duldulao, and supported by the 2010 Rice Awareness and Anniversary committees.
“Yearly tree planting is part of the Collective Negotiations Agreement between the APE and PhilRice. It is also a way of helping the Institute reaffirm its commitment to sustain a healthy environment, being ISSO: 14001: 2004 (Environmental Management System) certified,” Duldulao said.
Duldulao also said that the effects of climate change on the rice industry is now being strongly felt and planting trees is one way of helping our rice farmers.
Studies conducted at the International Rice Research Institute’s field from 1979 to 2003 reveal that there is a 10 percent-decrease in rice grain yield for each 1°C increase in growing-season minimum temperature in the dry season.
He also said planting new trees remains one of the cheapest and most effective means of mitigating climate change.
In an article published by Lasallian Institute for the Environment (LIFE), an organization focused on the environment, “a single mature tree can absorb carbon dioxide at a rate of about 22 kg/year and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere enough to support two human beings.”
Furthermore, Marlon Pareja, LIFE’s technical program director, said a hectare of trees can sequester about 6.5 tons of carbon each year which can compensate to the amount of carbon dioxide released by an automobile that has travelled about 14,000 km.
Fifty-nine percent of the trees were planted by PhilRice stations located in Ilocos Norte, Isabela, Laguna, Negros Occidental, Agusan del Norte, North Cotabato, and Albay; 6 percent by sister agencies and school organizations; 12 percent in adopted schools; 13 percent in watershed areas; and 11 percent in PhilRice Central Experiment Station (CES).
Additional trees will also be planted before the end of month by staff who were unable to participate in the activity.
The activity culminated with the planting of Palawan cherry blossoms at PhilRice CES in July 12, participated by members of the PhilRice Executive Council and new and outgoing officers of APE. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 16 July 2010 )
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TCP4 graduates pioneer coop |
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Features
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Written by The Web Team
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Monday, 21 June 2010 |
 Men of Pualas. Some of the farmer-members of the Pualas Multi-purpose Cooperative. When people are motivated by one goal, they become very powerful, and their efforts will certainly yield results—just like a multitude of ants determined to subdue a worm and carry it to their anthill in preparation for the rainy days.
The Pualas Farmers’ Multi- Purpose Cooperative in Pagalongan, Ramain, Lanao del Sur is a beautiful story of how farmer-graduates of a TCP 4 training course in 2006 pooled their resources to help their fellow rice farmers. Motivated farmersRice farming had always been frustrating for them. High input cost, low yield, huge debts—they could hardly find anything good in it. When the farmers attended lectures in the Farmers Field School (FFS), they learned that rice farming is an art tempered with science—and can be a profit-laden venture.
Cader Cabugatan, 42, the cooperative’s treasurer, said they learned the use of the leaf color chart (LCC) through the FFS.
“Before we used to apply 5 bags of urea/ha in one cropping season. Now we only apply 1.5 bags following the LCC reading,“ said Cader. With the escalated price of P2,000.00/bag of urea in Lanao del Sur, the farmers now save P7,000/ha by using the LCC!
Convinced that they learned yield-enhancing and cost-reducing technologies from the FFS, they decided to put up a cooperative to help their fellow farmers in Pualas.
One goal, one barangayThey started with the P10, 000 capital which they got from their produce in Palayamanan. They divided the money among themselves on condition that they each had to return their share with a 30% interest after the cropping season. Their P10,000 is now P50,000 plus they have already bought a rice mill, their most treasured asset.
 Cader Cabugatan
For transparency’s sake, they log all the operations on a cartolina sheet posted on the wall. The logs are totaled at the end of the month. Cader said that they have a machine operator to make sure that the rice mill is always in good condition. Bgy. Pualas does not have any other rice mill, so they are making good money out of it.
Mutual cooperationThe cooperative fines P250 anyone absent in meetings. As a result, all 30 members share their ideas and advice for their smooth operation, Cader explained. Moreover, they do not have delinquent members as all of them pay their obligations on time.
Cader reported that before, they were forced to borrow money with usurious interest of at least 50% just so they could finance their rice farming. Through the cooperative, farmers can now borrow at much reduced rates. So the cooperative won’t run out of assets, they allow jewelry or any valued possession as collateral. The cooperative plans to buy a dryer to complement their milling business.
While theirs is a budding cooperative, the fact remains that people in Pualas have expanded their influence to serve their fellow farmers. Trainings on proposal making or networking with other organizations will help the cooperative improve their operations, said Alexander Mangondaya, agricultural promotion officer in the area.
What’s more, they also help their members even in non-agri needs like burials. No wonder the cooperative has bonded the community even more. The people there know that they have each other toward a progressive Pualas rice farming community. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 21 June 2010 )
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Features
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Written by The Web Team
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Friday, 11 June 2010 |
When people decide to help themselves, the defining glory of development sparks and shines. Their pooled power can surely precipitate change in their lives.
Such is the case in Buadiposo, Buntong in Lanao del Sur when TCP 4 2008 training graduates formed the Bamboo Landers’ Movement (BLM), a service-oriented group devoted to helping the farming community in Buadiposo. They maintain a seedling nursery, vermicompost, and sell products for organic farming.
The BLM nursery Palawan Akoon
In the nursery, they plant sitao, pechay, okra, and other vegetables. Per harvest, they have a net income of P25,000 each from pechay and okra, their bestsellers. They sell seeds to farmers in nearby barangays Sugod and Marantao.
“Our seeds go far, because we sell only high-quality seeds,” said Akoon.
Other farmer-members related that their customers now are mostly from referrals. They also started from individually asking people to buy their produce. Now, they get reservations even before harvest. They gave away their contact numbers to facilitate orders.
New networks, productsIt didn’t take long before their efforts got noticed by the Al-Mujadilah Development Foundation
(AMDF), a non-governmental organization based in Lanao del Sur working on rural development. AMDF linked BLM to another NGO, Tacdrup, based in Davao City. Tacdrup sponsored trainings on indigenous
microorganisms, which BLM is selling now.
Fermented plant juice (FPJ), caphos, ornamental and organic herbal nutrients, and fermented amino acid are some of the indigenous microorganism products of BLM. These are either from
food wastes like fish bones, vegetables, or spices. The processes are very simple and are more or less
the same: chop, mix, store, transfer to container, ferment and voila! The product is ready to be sold. FPJ, for instance is sold at P100 per 1-liter bottle.
GrowingBLM has written manuals in the Maranao language to guide their customers on how to use their products.
They are presently looking for funding agencies to help them expand their operations. Their members are likewise eager to attend trainings to update their farming knowledge. As of this writing, they are preparing their organization’s papers for registration as they believe that through it, fund sourcing and networking with other organizations will be easy.
Akoon said that the good thing about their members is that they also have their own vegetable gardens in their backyards. They have all imbibed the lessons in their farmers’ field school— that they should always have ready access to food that they themselves produce.
Jamil Amer, the agricultural promotion officer who was assigned in the area, maintains his ties with the people in the community. He said that he still receives text messages from them asking if there are updates on rice production that they need to know. For Jamil, what happened in Buadiposo is fulfilling as the farmers now are taking the initiative to take a step further using what they learned from TCP 4.  BLM farmer-members know it only too well that maintaining good vegetable plots with neatly placed trellises and plastic mulches will give them huge monetary returns. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 11 June 2010 )
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