THE Department of Agriculture (DA) will organize a new office to take charge of making the country’s dry lands productive, a Philippine participant in the ongoing training course on Dryland Farming Techniques for Developing Countries in Baoding, Hebei province, in China, reported.

It will be tentatively called the Philippine Dryland Research Institute (PhilDRI), said Rowena Bumanlag of the Muñoz Science City-based Philippine-Sino Center for Agricultural Technology (PhilSCAT). Bumanlag is one of the Philippine participants.

The other Filipino participant in the three-month long training is Bonifacio de la Cruz of the Bureau of Soils and Water Management (BSWM) in Quezon City.

Bumanlag said PhilDRI will be the first- ever dry land research and development institution in the country being pushed by the DA and the India-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat).

“It is seen as the country’s proactive defense against climate change” she said.

The training course started on May 19 and will last until July 17. It is attended by 48 agricultural workers from 28 developing countries. It aims “to infer experiences and problems and solutions on dry-land agriculture” in those countries.

Participants are also expected to adopt the dry-land farming techniques practiced in China and other more developed countries.

These techniques include the use of drought-resistant crop varieties and field- management practices, drought-proof soil- management measures, efficient use of water resources, adjustment of production structures for increasing the income of farmer households and proper use of natural resources for sustainable development.

The countries represented in the training course are the Philippines, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Serbia, Myanmar, Ghana, Liberia, Lesotho, Sudan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Benin, Eritrea, Armenia, Algeria, Brunei, Syria, Nigeria, Djibouti, Papua New Guinea, Korea, Kenya, Togo, Laos, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Benin and Rwanda.

Bumanlag, in a press statement, said the Philippines has over 3 million hectares of dry lands inhabited by around 5 million families suffering from extreme poverty.

THE Philippines’ food import bill for 2008 may go up to close to 40 percent due to more expensive rice, wheat and dairy products, according to the latest Food Outlook released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

DESPITE exhibiting some of the best practices in the Philippines, many of the best cities in the country still cannot be considered globally competitive, according to the International Finance Corp. (IFC).

THE local farm sector’s credit requirement was estimated at P200 billion in 2007, but banks were only able to finance P48 billion, or 24 percent, of this requirement, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) has allocated P500 million for its Organikong Pagsasaka program, a program that seeks to encourage farmers to use organic fertilizers.

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) will organize a new office to take charge of making the country’s dry lands productive, a Philippine participant in the ongoing training course on Dryland Farming Techniques for Developing Countries in Baoding, Hebei province, in China, reported.

THE government, through the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), will spend some P60 million to conduct a National Nutrition Survey (NNS), according to the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB).

THE vice chairman of the House Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Development believes that the recent enactment into law of the Magna Carta for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) would create thousands of job opportunities and new businesses in the country.