Text and Photos By Henrylito D. Tacio
A weak El Niño is hovering upon Mindanao. And it is likely to strengthen toward the end of the year, according to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA).
In Davao Region, it has already wreaked 1,427.82 hectares of rice production areas while another 591.64 hectares of fields allotted for corn production had been affected. These were the figures bared by Herna Palma, the El Niño focal person of the regional office of Department of Agriculture, to a local daily.
In a recent climate forum for agriculture convened by the agriculture department and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization held last week, Anthony Joseph R. Lucero said that as of April 23, several provinces in Mindanao were affected by dry spell, one of the manifestations of the El Niño phenomenon.
Lucero, senior weather specialist of the weather bureau, had identified the provinces of Davao del Norte, Davao Oriental, and Compostela Valley in Davao Region as among those affected by dry spell.
Other provinces in Mindanao suffering the same fate also included Agusan del Sur, Bukidnon, Guimaras, Lanao del Sur, Misamis Oriental, Sultan Kudarat, Surigao del Norte and Surigao del Sur.
The following provinces in Mindanao were affected with drought were Basilan, Lanao del Norte, Maguindanao, Misamis Occidental, Sarangani, South Cotabato, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur, and Zamboanga Sibugay.
According to PAGASA, a province is said to experience dry spell when there is two consecutive months of way below normal rainfall condition (21%-60% reduction of average rainfall). Drought ensues when the normal rainfall condition is way below for five consecutive months.
“While the weak El Niño is currently present in the tropical Pacific, it has chances of strengthening toward the end of 2015,” the weather bureau man warned.
But the good news is that the onset of the rainy season associated with Southwest monsoon — locally called habagat — is expected to commence by mid-June 2015. Habagat is responsible for the great portion of rainfall during the country’s wet season. “About 60% of the rainfall in the Philippines is associated with Southwest monsoon,” Lucero said.
In his presentation, Lucero said that three provinces in Davao Region — Compostela Valley, Davao del Norte, and Davao del Sur — “in general might experience near to above normal rainfall conditions during the forecast period.”
On the other hand, Davao Oriental “might experience near to above normal rainfall condition in May, June, August and October 2015.” Also, below normal rainfall condition is expected in July and September 2015.
El Niño, according to the country’s weather bureau, is a “large scale oceanographic/meteorological phenomenon that develops in the Pacific Ocean and is associated with extreme climatic variability (like) devastating rains, winds, droughts, etc.” It is an eccentricity which makes dry places wet, wet places dry, warm places cold, and cold places warm.
But that’s getting ahead of the story. Scientists claim that the oceans, especially the Pacific, exert a powerful effect on world climate through the sheer mass transport of heat and the evaporation of water.
The water vapor thus produced condenses to form storm clouds, releasing latent heat into the atmosphere in the process. This provides the atmosphere’s largest single heat source, and the higher the ocean temperature in a given location, the greater the production of water vapor, clouds and atmospheric heat. The climate system’s complex internal linkages, only partly understood by scientists, determine how the clouds and heat are distributed around the world.
El Niño starts when, through causes not well understood by scientists, prevailing easterly winds slacken at the equator, allowing a broad but subtle wave of warm water from the western Pacific to flow eastward toward South America.
Wikipedia shares this information: “Because El Niño’s warm pool feeds thunderstorms above, it creates increased rainfall across the east-central and eastern Pacific Ocean. The effects of El Niño in South America are direct and stronger than in North America. An El Niño is associated with warm and very wet summers (December-February) along the coasts of northern Peru and Ecuador, causing major flooding whenever the event is strong or extreme.
“The effects during the months of February, March and April may become critical. Along the west coast of South America, El Niño reduces the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that sustains large fish populations, which in turn sustain abundant sea birds, whose droppings support the fertilizer industry. This leads to fish kills offshore Peru.”
The El Niño cycle may be simple, yet, the energy reserve it carries is vast, almost unimaginable. Here’s one account: “(El Niño) contains more energy than has been produced from all the fossil fuels burned in the United States since the beginning of the century – that’s all the gasoline in all the cars, the coal in all the power plants, the natural gas in all the furnaces. It would take more than a million larger power plants, at 1,000 megawatts each, running full tilt for a year, to heat the ocean that much.”
“El Niño events occur on average every four or five years, but irregularly – they can be two years apart, or as many as 10 years,” reminds an official of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Forewarned is forearmed, so goes a familiar saying. This must be the reason why the Laguna-based Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARRD) has come up with a compendium of materials on the abnormal weather entitled, The Fiery Fury of El Niño.
Since El Niño is equated with drought in the Philippines, PCARRD advised farmers to plant drought-tolerant crops in time of El Niño. Examples of such crops are sorghum, sweet peppers, asparagus, ube, tugue, alugbati, winged beans, cowpea, cucumber, kadios, camote, cassava, peanut, ginger, mung beans, and black peppers. The following fruit trees are also drought-tolerant: cashew, mango, citrus, tamarind, avocado, jackfruit, guava, and grapes.
Watering, if necessary, must be done only during the cool part of the day – not on windy days. To keep the crops moist, cover them with mulch. Mulch is a layer of organic materials – usually – that is spread on the surface of the soil.
Where feasible, construct small water impounding reservoirs and other soil and water conservation measures (trench and contour canals, for instance) to catch and store water from rain or divert water from source.
In Mindanao, a non-government organization has developed a farming system that can defy the onslaught of El Niño. It’s called Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT), a scheme recommended for upland areas.
The cost and return analysis of the SALT demonstration plot at the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center in Kinuskusan, Bansalan, Davao del Sur, showed that during the El Niño in 1983, the system still managed to give a monthly net income of P436.90. The previous figure, in 1982, was P597.85 per month. Reported studies showed that most upland farmers in the country during that time get a measly income of only P300 per month.
In 1990, when another drought hit Mindanao, the SALT system had a monthly net income of P1,277.31. This was only 54.34 lower than the previous reported monthly net income of P1,331.74 in 1989.
SALT introduces a scheme whereby denuded uplands can be made productive for farmers using locally available materials. Planting leguminous trees and shrubs closely as belts, this technology conserves soil and water, making the uplands more favorable for the sustained production of many annual and perennial agricultural crops.
“I think the reason why our SALT farm still yields crops was due to the hedgerows planted along the contours of the farm,” said Roy C. Alimoane, the center’s director.
Among those that are used for hedgerows are locally-grown “ipil-ipil” (Leucaena leucocephala) and “kakawate” (Gliricidia sepium). Introduced species like Flemingia macrophylla, Indigofera anil, and Desmodium rensonii can also be used. “They all fix nitrogen from the air,” Alimoane says. “As such, they help fertilize the soil with the droppings of their leaves.”
The hedgerows are cut down when they are one meter tall or when they begin to shade crops. “The cut branches with leaves are piled at the base of the crops to serve as fertilizer,” Alimoane says. “They also serve as mulching materials so that the moisture can be retained in the soil.”
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