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HIGH oil
prices have forced Filipino rice farmers to contend with
soaring fertilizer costs which have gone up by more than
half in recent months, an official of the Department of
Agriculture (DA) said.
Dr.
Frisco Malabanan, director of the Ginintuang Masaganang
Ani Rice Program, said the price of complete fertilizer
has risen by as much as 68 percent to P1,350 per
50-kilogram bag, from a little over the P800 per 50-kg
bag price level registered in December.
“The
cost of producing palay has gone up mainly because of
the increase in the price of fertilizer,” said Malabanan
in an interview.
The
Agriculture official noted that traditional rice farmers
use as much as five bags of complete fertilizer per
hectare, including other chemicals such as urea.
According to Malabanan, farmers now have to shell out
P10,000 to P11,000 to plant palay in one hectare.
Earlier,
National Food Authority Administrator Jessup Navarro
said that since fertilizer is petroleum-based, any price
hike of oil in the world market will bring about a
similar rise in fertilizer costs.
While
the ex-farm price of palay has become more expensive due
to the increase in demand, Malabanan said this is good
for farmers since this will encourage them to plant
more.
DA
officials said that aside from tight supplies in the
world market, the increasing cost of producing palay has
caused the rise in retail prices of regular milled rice.
To ease
the pressure on prices caused by climbing production
costs, Malabanan said the DA is encouraging farmers to
make use of organic fertilizers.
Two of
the biofertilizer brands being promoted by the DA are
Bio-Con and Bio-N, which were developed by experts at
the University of the Philippines campus in Los Baños,
Laguna.
The DA
noted that Bio-N already supplies at least 50 percent of
the nitrogen requirements for rice, corn and vegetables,
with only five 200-gram packets needed for seeds that
are enough to plant one hectare of rice or corn.
Bio-N
promotes shoot growth and root development in crops,
increases the yields per hectare and develops the
resistance of corn to wind and certain plant diseases.
Moreover, the department also said Bio-N inoculants are
environmentally safe and can eliminate the risk of
groundwater pollution caused by the leaching of nitrate,
especially in loose soils.
On the
other hand, Bio-Con also promotes growth and reduces the
use of chemical fertilizers by 30 percent to 50 percent,
with increases in yield ranging from 10 percent to 20
percent. |
