Agriculture Business Week

The Establishment of a research institute that will serve as the country’s first line of defense against drought and climate change is now being proposed by two noted scientists from the Ilocos provinces, Dr William D. Dar, director general of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), and Dr Santiago R. Obien, retired executive director of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice).

They said the Philippines has more than three million hectares of drylands cultivated by about five million households, most of whom are very poor especially those in Northern Luzon, Central Visayas, and Southern Mindanao. Recurrent droughts and environmental degradation due to climate change aggravate the suffering of these poor communities.

In 2007 alone, the entire Ilocos region experienced extreme drought causing serious damage to corn and rice crops in La Union, Ilocos Sur and Pangasinan. There was practically no rain in the whole region from June to August.

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Posted on October 24th, 2008 under Climate Change. Tags: Climate Change. Comments: None

Climate Change is for real and it would lead to greater variability of rainfall, resulting in increased frequency of extreme events like flash floods, or more and longer dry spells due to high temperature.

Experts have predicted that at the worse, rainfall in 2050 will increase by 20 percent compared to the global average from 1961 to 1990 and the sea level will rise. This means that flooding would be the problem and not drought.

Even at present, typhoons are frequently occurring from July to December, bringing in strong winds and excess water that result in continuous flooding of rice fields. In the Philippines, 10 to 40 percent of the rice area during this period is damaged by flashfloods, especially in Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Cagayan, Pangasinan, Bulacan, Pampanga, Camarines Sur, Occidental Mindoro, Tarlac, and Nueva Vizcaya.

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Posted on October 22nd, 2008 under Climate Change, Rice. Tags: PhilRice. Comments: None

Cordillera, depending on the state of its environment, can effectively cushion the effects of climate change. But due to the continuous devastation of its pristine environment throughout the years, the viability of Cordillera as the watershed of North Luzon is now at risk.

This is aggravated by a burgeoning population, mining, logging, and forest fires. With the declining forest cover, erosion easily occurs, observes Thomas Killip, presidential assistant for Cordillera. This is why when the rain comes, continues Killip, water flows down right away, carrying silt and forms into rampaging flashflood.

He also said that the deterioration of forest not only affects irrigation and domestic water supply but also sanitation, fisheries, livestock, crop production, and other livelihood industries that depend on the water from the Cordillera Mountains.
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Posted on October 12th, 2008 under Climate Change. Tags: Climate Change. Comments: None

Nature is finally unleashing its wrath and no one, not even the agricultural world, is spared.

Over the years, climate researchers have warned about the rising of global temperature. This phenomenon is known as global warming-the heating of the earth’s surface due to the increased emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

These greenhouse gases are emitted from various sources such as industrial processes, energy generation, fuel combustion from transportation, forest fires, waste decomposition, and also from natural activities such as volcanic eruptions and changes ill solar radiation.

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Posted on August 21st, 2008 under Climate Change. Tags: Global Warming. Comments: None

It is a fact that the cost of food on the table is necessarily related to energy cost.

I had occasion to attend the energy summit recently. As usual, I relate energy to agriculture. The question raised was : is $100 per barrel, crisis or opportunity? Crisis creates opportunities.

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Posted on July 1st, 2008 under Climate Change. Comments: None

Climate Change is for real, but we can do something to cushion its effects in agriculture.

One way is by establishing agro-forest and fishery ecological zones (AFFEZ). Researchers have already proposed to do this in the Cordillera pursuant to the identification of strategic agriculture and fisheries development zones (SAFDZ) as called for in the implementation of Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA).

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Posted on June 27th, 2008 under Climate Change. Comments Off