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FRUIT
and vegetable farming for Crispolo Galasa, 47, is an
annual activity. The time to plant, harvest or \change
the crops has been an agenda he knows by heart. All of a
sudden, however, the whole schedule is in shambles.
His
decades of experience as a farmer could no longer serve
as a point of reference as the weather nowadays is no
longer easy to predict.
“The
climate has become unpredictable, making agriculture
difficult,” said Galasa, a farmer in La Trinidad,
Benguet. “When the rain starts falling, farmers begin
cultivating fruits and vegetables in the highlands.
However, the wet season stops abruptly, leaving the
fields dry and unable to be harvested.”
This
April, the warmest and driest in his lifetime, Galasa
has lost a third of his strawberry and vegetable crops
in his more than 5,000-square-meter farm. Many other
Benguet farmers are facing similar difficulty and they
all dread the long periods of drought.
Thousands of fruit and vegetable farmers come from the
towns of Atok, Bakun, Buguias, Kibungan, Kapangan,
Mankayan, Bokod and La Trinidad.
Among
the crops produced are strawberry, sayote, lettuce,
cabbages, carrots, pechay and other leafy vegetables.
“It is
painful to think that global warming will further
aggravate the lack of rainfall,” said vegetable farmer
Elena Apnoyan, 50. “Water is becoming increasingly
scarce and unpredictable. So, besides the weather, water
shortage will also worsen our condition here because
most of us rely on rainwater for irrigation.”
Apnoyan,
a vegetable farmer since 1970, added farmers here have
been noticing climate impacts for many years now.
“Unfortunately the problems have increased massively
over the past few years, and nowadays it’s also
affecting us financially,” she said. With the extreme
weather in the Cordillera, some of the highland
vegetable farmers also blame the unusual frost during
the month of January. This year, a total of P10 million
worth of crops were destroyed due to the drop in
temperature to as low as 6 degrees Celsius, particularly
in the town of Atok, Benguet, according to the data from
the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist.
Climate
change, it appears, is now under way. Since 1900 the
global mean temperature has increased by 0.7 degree
Celsius. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
has concluded that human activities that emit greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere are responsible for most of
the warming of at least the past 50 years.
According to the IPCC, agricultural production in many
countries, including Philippines, will likely be
severely compromised by climate variability and change
in the coming years.
In the
past few years, climate and weather changes have led to
confusion for farmers, said Felicitas Ticbaen, the
municipal agriculturist of La Trinidad, Benguet.
“Farmers
need assistance to adapt to the changing weather
conditions. Droughts and floods, out-of-season rain and
dry spells are affecting the welfare of thousands of
farmers,” Ticbaen said.
Learning
what farming practices work best in changing climates
and putting those changes into practice is an important
part of adaptation, she added.
“Climate
change is a reality and we have been convincing farmers
to plant certain types of crops within specific growing
seasons, and we also help them decide what seeds to
plant that mature early and that are resilient in dry
conditions,” Ticbaen said,
Benguet
Gov. Nestor Fongwan added that better farming practices
will not just help farmers in Benguet adapt to climate
change but will also aid efforts to curb agricultural
greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture contributes some
20 percent of man-made emissions of greenhouse-gases.
“They
[farmers] need to start looking at their
drought-resistant crops and new management techniques.
The local government and the farmers should, hand in
hand, find ways on how to respond, how to adapt and how
to be more resilient,” Fongwan said. |
