PinoyEcoFarmer

Manage Insects on Your Farm: A Guide to Ecological Strategies. Ecological pest management employs tactics that have existed in natural ecosystems for thousands of years. Since the beginning of agriculture — indeed, long before then — plants co-evolved with pests and with the natural enemies of those pests. As plants developed inherent protective mechanisms against pests, they were helped by numerous partners in the ecosystem, for example:

Beneficial insects that attack crop insects and mites by chewing them up or sucking out their juices; Beneficial parasites, which commandeer pests for habitat or food; Disease-causing organisms, including fungi, bacteria, viruses, protozoa and nematodes that fatally sicken insects or keep them from feeding or reproducing. These organisms also attack weeds; Insects such as ground beetles that eat weed seeds Beneficial fungi and bacteria that inhabit root surfaces, blocking attack by disease organisms.

A crimson clover cover crop prevents erosion, improves soil, fixes nitrogen and attracts beneficial insects. By integrating these natural strategies into your farming systems, you can manage pests in a way that is healthier for the environment and eliminates many of the problems associated with agrichemical use. Knowing the life cycles of pests and understanding their natural enemies allows you to better manipulate the system to enhance, rather than detract from, the built-in defenses available in nature.

Another National Academy of Science report (1996), Ecologically Based Pest Management (EBPM), stated that EBPM “should be based on a broad knowledge of the agro-ecosystem and will seek to manage rather than eliminate pests” in ways that are “profitable, safe, and durable.” In addition to reducing pest damage, shifting your farming system to ecological pest management will bring multiple benefits to your operation. For example, moving from monoculture to longer rotations improves water-and nutrient-use efficiency. Cover crops planted to attract beneficial insects also suppress weeds, improve the soil, provide moisture-conserving mulch, fix or store nitrogen for subsequent crops and contribute to overall nutrient management goals.

Building a Sustainable Business: A Guide to Developing a Business Plan for Farms and Rural Businesses. Regardless of whether you are a beginning entrepreneur who has recently inherited a business, an experienced farmer who is considering on-farm processing, or a retiring business owner who is looking to pass on the farm, business planning is important. It is an ongoing process that begins with the identification of values and ends with a strategic plan to address critical management functions.

Like many rural entrepreneurs, you may have a strong sense of the values that drew you to the land or inspired you to begin a business. You may also have a clear set of personal and business goals that you would like to pursue “when the time is right.” But, if you’re like most farmers and rural business owners, you run into problems when trying to incorporate values and goals into day-to-day business decisions. How can you build a balanced and sustainable business—one that reflects your values and is successful—in the long run?

Unlike most other business planning tools, Building a Sustainable Business: A Planning Guide for Farmers and Rural Business Owners takes a whole-farm approach. You will consider traditional business planning and marketing principles as well as your personal, economic, environmental and community values—those less tangible things that are a part of your thoughts every day, but which often don’t become a planned part of your business. You will be asked to integrate values with business management practices throughout this Guide.

Building Soils for Better Crops: Sustainable Soil Management. This book is meant to give the reader a holistic appreciation of the importance of soil health and to suggest ecologically sound practices that help to develop and maintain healthy soils.

Building Soils for Better Crops has evolved over time. The first edition focused exclusively on the management of soil organic matter. If you follow practices that build and maintain good levels of soil organic matter, you will find it easier to grow healthy and high-yielding crops. Plants can withstand droughty conditions better and won’t be as bothered by insects and diseases. By maintaining adequate levels of organic matter in soil, you have less reason to use as much commercial fertilizer, lime, and pesticides as many farmers now purchase. Soil organic matter is that important.

Organic matter management was also the heart of the second edition, the authors decided to write a more comprehensive guide that includes other essential aspects of building healthy soils, such as managing soil physical properties and nutrients, as well as a chapter on evaluating soil health. In addition, the farmer case studies were updated and added a new one. The case studies describe a number of key practices that enhance the health of the farmers’ soils.

For hobbyists, serious farmers and retirees who need to shake off that sedentary lifestyle, what should be their guide in shopping for farm lots, now that these are sprouting like mushrooms all over the land?

Let’s ask the experts.

“Farm estates successfully integrate man-made, low-density development with the natural features of the site,” said Amado de Jesus, founding chair of the Philippines Green Architecture Movement. He added, “These are much more sensitive than regular land developments like subdivisions. Waterways, old growth forests, including indigenous wildlife must be respected and preserved while providing modern facilities.”

For agri-idealists, all farm practices should be ecologically sound.

You Want More? Continue Reading……..

An agrarian reform beneficiary in Daraga, Albay has found a “gold mine” in manually extracted virgin pili nut oil he himself developed painstakingly for six months shortly after attending a government-sponsored pili nut food processing course early last year, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) said Thursday.

Victor Ramon Goyena, 50, a civil engineering graduate, said it took him six months of experimentation before he finally perfected in October last year the extraction of virgin pili nut oil from newly harvested nuts. “The temperature plays a very important role in maintaining the nutritional potency of the oil. Only when no alteration of its nutrient composition can we claim it as ‘virgin oil,’” he said. Goyena added that he got hooked into this undertaking after attending a series of trainings on pili nut food processing sponsored by the Department of Agriculture (DA) in Albay.

You Want More? Continue Reading……..

Empower the landless and earn money from alternative farming. This is the plan for a relatively remote barangay. This is a scheme that hopefully will inspire other villages in Laguna and even beyond the province.

The village of Atisan is located where the Malarayat mountain looms over rolling hills straddling the borders of Lipa on the Batangas side, Tiaong in Quezon and Laguna’s San Pablo. The village is 500 meters above sea level and about 12 kilometers east of the City of San Pablo which is famous for her seven lakes.

This is slash-and-burn area where poor squatter families cut the trees for charcoal, firewood and lumber, scrounging for whatever they can to survive on scant harvests of ube, gabi, luya, the occasional bananas and sickly-thin coconut trees.

You Want More? Continue Reading……..

a lush ricefield

What does it take to convert a rice field cultivated the conventional way into an organic farm? One technique is to follow the system of Pastor Jerry Dionson of Humayan Ministry in Bago City, Negros Occidental. He has been helping the farmers in this rice bowl of Negros in converting conventionally farmed fields into organic farms.

Dionson and his farming colleagues have good reasons for converting rice fields into organic farms. For one, it is economical to produce rice the organic way since the farmers themselves are taught to make their own fertilizers and plant protection inputs. Usually, an organic farmer can grow organic rice at a cash expense of only about P14,700 per hectare. For another reason, the price of organic rice is much higher than the conventionally produced grains. The selling price is P60 to P80 per kilo.

As per the experience at the Humayan Ministry, the yield increases as the years pass by. In 2005, when they started converting their farms, the yield was only 75 cavans of palay per hectare. This increased to 87 cavans in 2006, 93 cavans in 2007, 115 cavans in 2008 and then 128 cavans in 2009.

You Want More? Continue Reading……..

The pili (Canarium ovatum) tree is the source of the pili nut which is made into delicacies that are the pride of the Bicol Region. What most people don’t know is that the bark of the pili yields a valuable resin – known as “Manila elemi” – which is used in the paint, pharmaceuticals, printing and perfume industries.

However, despite the fact that 225,000 pili trees grow in the Bicol provinces, there exists virtually no resin harvesting enterprises in most parts of the region.

To help start a sustainable industry, the Department of Science and Technology-Forest Products Research and Development Institute (DOST-FPRDI) started three years ago teaching pili growers and farmers the scientific way of resin gathering. “The resin must be tapped the right way to make sure that the pili trees are not harmed and their yields are sustained. Over-tapping, deep tapping and frequent re-chipping can damage and eventually kill the trees,” explains FPRDI’s forester Arsenio B. Ella.

You Want More? Continue Reading……..