Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte is backing President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s push for a balanced fertilization strategy involving the mixed-use of both biofertilizers or organic fertilizers and inorganic imports in farms.
The move is said to be a way for the government to finally wean farmers from decades of over-dependence on costly imported inputs that shrink their incomes and impair the environment.
“Freeing our farmers from the decades-long chokehold of pricey imported chemical fertilizers in favor of the use of biofertilizers or organic inputs is an audacious agricultural policy shift that should have happened a long time back, in order to boost palay productivity, raise farmers’ incomes and pull down rice prices while at the same time reversing soil degradation and fighting planet warming,” he said.
“It has to take a President who is concurrent Secretary of the Department of Agriculture to carry out this eco-friendly farming strategy, which makes sense as it will let him deliver on his multi-pronged commitments to modernize Philippine agriculture, slash rice prices, bump up farmers’ yields and incomes, nurture agribusiness and fight climate change,” he added.
He proposed that the appropriate House committees conduct a joint inquiry on the impact on Philippine agriculture and farm productivity of our farmers’ overwhelming use for decades now of imported chemical fertilizers and a comparison between the actual costs for, and per-hectare yields of, local growers using organic and inorganic production inputs.
He said the eco-friendly initiative would greatly benefit not only our farmers, but also the overwhelming majority of our people who consume rice as a staple, and agribusiness entrepreneurs producing and/or selling biofertilizers or organic fertilizers.
He doubted the critics’ claim that it is cheaper or just the same to use chemical fertilizers, which reportedly cost P1,100 per bag, as against the latest price bulletin of the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority that it actually costs P1,800.
He said granting for the sake of argument that the critics can produce urea that sells for only P1,100 per bag, non-believers could not keep such a low price for long for the benefit of local farmers.
He cited a shift to biofertilizers and organic fertilizers will “lead to longer term sustainability as opposed to the myopia of continuously importing dollar-depleting petroleum-based chemical fertilizers.”