Sunday, February 15, 2015

Adaptation in Philippine farming

Oliver T. Baccay at the Philippines Information Agency:  ...As a region which plays a key role in the balance of agricultural productivity, Cagayan Valley cannot afford to decrease production these days as it will have an effect on the entire country’s economy. But the threat disguised as Climate Change looms and may affect production, farmer-leaders told agriculture officials recently.      

Just how resilient and adapted to natural calamities as an effect of climate change are the region’s preferred crops would be a lingering question.

The region is within the typhoon belt, prone to different disasters that cause devastations to farmer’s productivity. Without these calamities, farmers’ produce would be enough to feed the nation  or even a surplus production for export.

With these challenges, the workers of the Department of Agriculture (DA) Region 2 as well as other agriculturists continue to stretch their research muscles to address these challenges not only to ensure production, but also to develop disaster-resilient crops. These efforts, Hector Tabbun, information officer, said include the researches for drought and water resistant corn, palay, legumes and root crop varieties.

 ...DA also constructed several Small Water Impounding Projects (SWIPS) in different areas to harvest sufficient water during the rainy season to be utilized during the dry season. The farmers are also continuously taught how to harvest rainwater from the small type water reservoir as a climate change adaptation measure....

Not in Cagayan, but a rice field in the Nagacadan Rice terraces, shot by Schubert Ciencia Shubert Ciencia, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

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