THE Department of Agriculture (DA) said it is planning to plant trees over a million hectares across identified critical watersheds across the country in the next five years to sustain agricultural productivity nationwide.
“We would like to get involved with agroforestry because we feel threatened by the continued depredation in watershed areas. You have to understand agriculture depends on water. Without water, there will be no agriculture,” Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol told reporters in an interview on May 29. “We are afraid there will come a time when our agricultural productivity will be affected if we do not protect the critical watersheds.”
Piñol said he would coordinate with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for the implementation of the agroforestry program he crafted, dubbed as “Bantay Kagubatan”.
“Our targets are the watershed areas and the critical watersheds. We will coordinate with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and ask them to allow us to plant trees under an agroforestry program, which will be considered as an agriculture activity and not a reforestation [program],” he said.
“If we target a million hectares over the next five years to be replanted, that sounds ambitious, but we have to be very ambitious and aggressive. I’ve been flying all over the country using a helicoper and when I looked down and saw the denuded mountains, I knew that if this problem is not addressed, this will have an adverse effect on agriculture,” he added.
The Agriculture chief said they are now eyeing six areas to be covered by the Bantay Kagubatan program: Cagayan watershed, Sierra Madre watershed, Pampanga wate shed, Agusan, Panay and Mindanao River basin.