by Ricky Jimenez
A rose by any name is still a rose. Organic farming is the same. Others call it natural farming, sustainable agriculture, or agro-ecological farming. It’s the same banana.
Keith O. Mikkelson, author of the popular book “Sustainable Agriculture” (2005), says there are subtleties that can make them a little different “but the commitment is to safe, quality food production without chemical inputs”.
Founder and executive director of Aloha House, a successful training ground for natural farming system in Palawan, Mikkelson said this type of farming begins by feeding the soil with organic matter (composted material from nature like leaves, weeds, manure , barks, straw, bones, etc). What happens next is that microbes in the organic matter will nourish the plan t. That’s why we say: feed the soil, not the plants”, he stressed.
Davao City now has its organic agriculture ordinance (No. 0384-10). Once the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) are done, organic farming, if supported by the City Government with sufficient funding, will become the main agricultural practice here. The ordinance is “a strategy for mitigation and adaptation to climate change”. To this writer, it is the key to solving global warming locally and I will show how.
According to the very influential sustainable management magazine SEEDLING published in Barcelona, Spain (October-December 2009 issue), “organic farming works because of the presence of organic matter in the soil that sequesters carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.”
As all agronomists know, soils contain enormous amount of carbon, mostly in the form of organic matter. The rise of industrial agriculture, with the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, has provoked a huge depletion of this organic matter in the soil. Much of the lost matter has ended up in the atmosphere in the form of CO2. It is possible to recapture this CO2 by a wholesale return to agro-ecological farming (organic farming), SEEDLING declared.
“In about half a century (which is the same amount of time in which large-scale soil depletion has occurred), the lost organic matter will be reincorporated into the soils, capturing in the process more than two-thirds of the present excess CO2 in the atmosphere. Although it may be a little too late to avert widespread environmental damage, such a strategy would offer the world a way out of the crisis”, the magazine added.
SEEDLING explained that when organic matter is mixed into the soil, new molecules are formed, enabling the soil to absorb 100 times as much water as those of dust and they can retain and later release to plants a similar proportion of nutrients.
Organic matter also provides binding molecules that keep the soil particles together, thus protecting the soil against erosion and rendering it more porous and less compact. This process has taken millions of years and the accumulation of organic matter in soils was a key factor in lowering the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere millions of years ago, thus making possible the emergence of current forms of life on Earth, the magazine elaborated.
This was proven in a 10-year study of composts and manure by Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania, USA: carbon is sequestered up to 2,000 lbs/acre/year (chemical fertilizer use could only manage 300 lbs/acre/year). “Storing –or sequestering –up to 2,000 lbs/acre/year of CO2 means that more then 7,000 lbs of CO2 are taken from the air and trapped in the field soil”, the study showed.
With organic farming to transform our agricultural landscape in Davao City in the near future, consumers can look forward to better physical health, cooler environment, thje main ingredients to sustainable and health lifestyle. Now this is real “think global, act local” in practice. (email me at rjrjrajimenez@gmail.com)
