Agriculture Business Week

Ordinary soil, farm wastes and cement equals durable hallow blocks.

Rural folks can beat the high prices of housing materials. Out of farm waste and ordinary soil, one can make durable hallow blocks comparable in strength to commercial ones. The hallow blocks can be made right on the building site fashioned similar to commercial hallow blocks. Although considered strictly non-load bearing, it is very satisfactory for low-cost housing. Its compressive strength ranges from i97 to 386 pounds per square inch (psi).

This simple technology, developed by the Forest Product Research and Industries Development Commission, makes use of a minimum amount of cement to make a stronger hallow block. One bag is enough to make 20 four-inch blocks or 12 six-inch blocks.

The first step is to gather agri-wood wastes such as sawdust, coconut trunk particles, sugar cane bagasse or ordinary soil. The latter has to be pulverized and sifted using a 1/4 inch wire mesh. Abaca waste, left after extracting fiber from the stalk, as well as coconut coir dust, the residue from processing coconut husk in coirflex plants, can also be used. Rice hull works too, but additional soil is needed when mixing this with cement.

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A coffee company’s ongoing soil and water conservation programs in coffee farms throughout the Philippines are proving to be beneficial during the dry months.

Joel Lumagbas, head of the agricultural services department of Nestle Philippines, Inc. (NPI), says the company is promoting soil and water conservation programs in coffee farms in various ways through the company’s Coffee Based Sustainable Farming System (CBSFS} under the worldwide drive of Sustainable Agriculture Initiative of Nestle (SAIN).

One method uses Jatropha curcas, known locally as tuba-tuba. Aside from being a source of glycerol and biodiesel, Jatropha curcas is one of the secondary crops that CBSFS has been promoting to provide additional income for farmers and to prevent soil erosion.

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In the 1870s, scientists exploring Amazonia in South America made an unusual discovery. Working independently, James Orton, Charles, Harti, and Herbert Smith described patches of black or dark brown soils, varying in size from 5 to more than 300 hectares, within a landscape otherwise typified by highly weathered reddish or bleached soils.

A detailed report from Smith, a geologist, characterized these “dark earths in Amazonia” as having a top-layer of a fine, dark loam, up to 60 centimeters thick. He also described them as the best soils of the Amazon, producing much higher crop yields than surrounding soils, and speculated that they owed their fertility “to the refuse of a thousand kitchens for maybe a thousand years.” That they were human-made was indicated by the abundance of fragments of Indian pottery that “cover the ground… like shells on a surf-washed beach.”

Despite the unusual nature of these findings, they initially failed to excite many scientists. Almost a century later, however, Wim Sombroek, a renowned Dutch soil scientist, sparked international interest by including several pages on the “terra preta” (black soil) and “terra mulata” (brown soil) in his influential 1966 book on Amazon soils.

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Scientists are getting wary on the declining quality of soil and water all over the world due to the continuous application of inorganic fertilizer. They noted that while inorganic fertilizer application is responsible for 40 percent of the world’s total production output, this practice has also led to ecological impact that ultimately threatens man’s existence.

In a recent symposium at BPRE, the participants claimed that 60 percent of the applied inorganic fertilizer contaminates the environment through run-off, seepage, percolation and volatilization. It contaminates the underground and surface water, and causes soil and water acidity, salinity and eutrophication. At the same time, water contaminated with nitrate when taken in causes blue baby syndrome both on humans and ruminants.

Teresita S. Sandoval of the Bureau of Soil and Water Management (BSWM) said that based on data from the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) and BSWM, water quality for agriculture poses no serious threat yet. However, she pointed out that this information may not reflect the true picture because of limited samples. Some aspects of sampling needed to establish the quality of a particular body of water over time and space were not adequately satisfied.

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On an early sunny morning, Dr. Cezar P. Mamaril, 76 stands on one of seven sorjan plots in his farm in Masaya, Bay, Laguna. He looks around to determine how his rice crop in the irrigated portion between the sorjan plots is performing. Next, he turns to the upland crops on the sorjan plots, which are elevated by at least half a meter higher than the irrigated lowland ricefield below them.

Dr. Mamaril was a scientist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the sprawling campus of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos. Before he joined IRRI in 1972, he was a soil chemistry professor in the Department of Soils, UP College of Agriculture where he obtained his undergraduate degree in agriculture major in soil science in 1955.

Right after graduation he worked as an assistant instructor in that department, and it did not take long before he obtained the Master of Science in Soil Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin through a USAID-NEC scholarship in 1958, and the Doctor of Philosophy in Soil Science with specializations in soil chemistry and soil fertility from the Kansas State University in 1963.

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Since Indigenous aromatic rice varieties are low-yielding due to their poor tillering capacity, many traditional rice farmers in Ifugao have shifted to planting high-yielding and early-maturing hybrid rice varieties to meet the increasing demand for rice.

In a survey that this writer conducted in October 2006, 40 percent of the traditional rice farmers in Ifugao are now growing hybrid varieties. What these farmers did not realize, however, is that the shift would eventually result in the extinction of the indigenous rice varieties.

And what’s more alarming is that these hybrid rice varieties are grown through conventional farming, which usually involves the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that are harmful to humans and the environment.

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The world is losing an equivalent of five to seven million hectares of farmland through erosion each year.

There are wars and there are wars. In Mindanao, there is a battle between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government’s military troops. But there is a kind of war that has been here since time immemorial and yet no one notices the conflict. It is called soil erosion.

“Soil erosion is an enemy to any nation – far worse than any outside enemy coming into a country a conquering it because it is an enemy you cannot see vividly,” declares Harold R. Watson, recipient of the 1985 Ramon Magsaysay Award for peace and international understanding. “It’s a slow creeping enemy that soon possesses the land.”

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A new technique in sugarcane production promises to be a most timely development as it could tremendously increase yields, especially at this time when some of the local harvests will have to go into the production of biofuel.

The technique is subsurface drip irrigation. It is not really new because it is now being done in India but it is something very new in the Philippines. For the first time in the country, the technology is being used on 12.64 hectares at the Gamboa Hermanos Multi-Purpose Cooperative Farm in San Carlos City, Negros Occidental. The sugarcane farm has a total area of 1,200 hectares.

Both the managers of the farm as well as the supplier of the subsurface drip system, Netafim of Israel, are very excited about the superior stand of the sugarcane crop in the demonstration farm. At the age of only five months, the canes already weigh two kilos each, according to Ted de la Torre, the agriculturist in charge of the  subsurface-irrigated crop. At this early stage, if the canes are to be harvested at the end of the fifth month, the possible yield was computed at 199 tons cane per hectare. That’s about double the usual yield of sugarcane grown under the conventional system using overhead sprinklers for irrigation. Surely, the yield could still increase tremendously since the plants still have another five or six months before harvest.

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Before nematodes or eelworms, which infect the roots of agricultural crops, were controlled by applying synthetic nematicides to the soil. These chemicals, however, are highly toxic, disrupt the natural soil ecosystem, and can cause serious environmental problems.

In the course of finding alternative control measures, a team of Filipino nematologists led by Dr. Romulo G. Davide, then professor of Plant Pathology in the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB), thought testing the capability of the fungus Paecilomyces lilacinus Strain 251 (PL 251) as a biological nematicide.

PL 251, which in 1980 can only be found in the Philippines, is parasitic to all stages of development of common plant-infecting nematodes particularly root knot, potato cyst, and spiral and burrowing nematodes. In their vermiform stages, nematodes are infected as they migrate through the soil. The infection starts when a spore of the fungus adheres to the cuticle and then germinates. The growing fungus then overwhelms the nematode and eats its body.
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Roots, the hidden half of a plant, are less studied than its above-ground counterparts. This was on the mind of Dr Roel R. Suralta, PhilRice agronomist, when he was starting his research on roots.

The seeming neglect of root research challenged him to make roots the subject of his dissertation at the Nagoya University, Japan. Titled “Significance of Root System Development Responses to Transient Soil Moisture Stress Conditions for Adaptation of Rice Plants”, his thesis centered on root plasticity or the ability of a plant’s root system to change developmentally and functionally in response to changing soil conditions, thus maintaining overall plant growth.

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Brothers Manuel and Dr. Lino Cortes, advocates of zero pesticide farming, are spreading their soil conditioning technology to the grassroots.

Manuel Cortes, known in the broadcast industry as Ka Maning, is not only a farmcaster, forester but also a plant nutritionist. Meanwhile, his older brother, Lino is a doctor of plant genetics who, for 40 years, was based in the US. By a twist of fate, both brothers found themselves bonded by a cause: to promote zero pesticide farming in the country through complete plant nutrition and soil conditioning.

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The condition of the soil is the most important factor in successful farming because if the soil is healthy, the crops planted in it would be healthy, too.

This is the conviction of Wilfred Noriel of Baloc, Sto. Domingo, Nueva Ecija. Believing that the crop’s nourishment is the best shield against plant sickness, this economics graduate of De La Salle University who has been farming for more than 11 years has been seeking ways to bring back lost soil nutrients.

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Vermicompost, the organic soil enhancer produced by composting farm wastes with microbes and earthworms, is now widely applied by small farmers in Compostela Valley, Mindanao. This development is mainly due to the efforts of Congressman Manuel Zamora, fondly known as “Way Kurat” (fearless) to his friends and constituents in the First District of the province.

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It is said that land is the most important component of any crop production system. It is vital to our survival and the food production system that we enjoy. That is why taking good care of our soil is basic to care of the environment and the perpetuity of the human race. It is good to know that technologies are available to better produce high quality, nutritious food and maintain the quality of the soil. This combination happens not by chance. Careful planning and consideration of some basic principles is required for sound soil management.

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