COTABATO CITY—A Moro engineer wants the autonomous region to create more viable livelihood opportunities for the local community of marsh dwellers out of earthworms and water hyacinths.
Engineer Avila Abobakar of Barangay Ungap, Sultan Kudarat said he is developing 12 concrete tubs to stuff with large volumes of water lilies that are otherwise left drifting downstream from the marshes of the Mindanao River.
The community, he said, could freely harvest floating hyacinths from the river and feed them to a kind of earthworms more popularly called the “ANCs”—short for African Night Crawlers
Abobakar said ANCs feed on hyacinths stuffed on tubs to excrete them in soil form, a simplified biological process to produce organic compost fertilizer.
He said the ANCs multiply fast, as even their males are reproductive, or bear their young by biological nature.
Abobakar said he had considered a project area situated somewhere in Cotabato City to be accessible for future educational tours on agriculture.
A civil engineer by profession, Abobakar is a weekend farmer, apart from heading the engineering district of Maguindanao del Norte for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao’s Ministry of Public Works (MPW-BARMM).
Being at the front-seat of roads planning and development, Abobakar said he noted a growing investment by the Bangsamoro government on infrastructure projects. However, he added “much can still be done to allocate more resources into rural agriculture development via direct community engagements with farmers and fishers.”
The engineer’s friends had even hatched the idea for that kind of organic fertilizer to be known soon in public as the “Avelarian Fertilizer” (AF) after him, as they said “the one developing a worthy idea by the mind and deeds deserve the honor.”
He said construction of the concrete tubs, each measuring one meter by 10 meters in length and a meter in height, “will not cost that much for the farmer with passion for this vocation, and the creativity for innovation to expand the sources of livelihood for the community.
Abobakar said he is contemplating to pass a proposal for partnership endeavor with BARMM’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) on applied research and development, “in order to this indigenous technology to be studied and be shared free of charge to the people, especially the serious students of farming, spending more time learning from a continuing work experience.”