BACOLOD CITY—Negros Occidental reasserted its lead in establishing organic farms, capitalizing on the livelihood benefits derived from creating organic-farm communities across this sugarcane-dominated province in Western Visayas.
The province now has more than 10,000 hectares of organic farms, many found in the lowland villages of Silay City, about 70 kilometers north of this city.
A bigger area, close to 10,000 hectares, is in upland Barangay Patag, at the boundary with Talisay City, and where one of the farmers also turned her place into an ecotourism resort with a natural-flowing stream from nearby Mount Manalagan, providing the clean pristine waters of its pools.
Dr. Joyce Wendam, assistant regional director of the Department of Agriculture (DA) here, said the latest assessment of regional performance in establishing organic farms placed Western Visayas in the lead, with its 11,592 hectares. The number, though, is one-third of the national target of having at least 5 percent of a region’s total agricultural area.
The region—comprised of the two Negros provinces and the Panay provinces of Iloilo, Antique, Capiz and Aklan—has a total agricultural area of 666,000 hectares. It is supposed to establish 33,000 hectares for organic farming.
The target was set to be achieved within 2011 and 2016, she told the BusinessMirror.
The regional DA office has conducted a baseline survey on the agriculture sector, including the organic farms, “to determine the status of the areas across the provinces,” Wendam said.
The survey was started early this year and expected to be submitted by December this year. The regional office allotted P1 million.
She said Negros Occidental has set the pace for the rest of the region to emulate, including pioneering efforts at organizing organic-farm communities and persuading city and municipal governments to pass local ordinances adapting organic-farm practices.
Silay City agriculturist Jason Benedicto said organic farms are devoted to vegetables.
He told the BusinessMirror that there was no conflict with the bigger commercial farms devoted to sugarcane and other cash crops. “In other cases, it is the commercial farms which are concerned because more pests come from vegetables than from sugarcane.”
“But it is also the increasing trend among foreign markets that want organic products, forcing commercial farms to go organic,” Wendam said.
To harmonize the perceived fears between the organic farmers and corporate farms, local ordinances on organic agriculture have required organic farms to establish buffer areas.
The buffer is not big, though, to make it easier for farmers to comply, about only 1-meter width of land to be planted to native banana varieties and madre de cacao.