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Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Dumaguete City steps up organic farming thru an ordinance, establish Trade Center

 DUMAGUETE CITY, Feb 24 (PIA) --Dumaguete City has intensified its organic farming with the proposed organic ordinance under the implementation of Republic Act 10068 or Organic Agriculture Law.  

City organic agriculture focal person Philip Altamarino said, in support of the ordinance, the city has planned to establish a Trading Center where the farmers sell their farm produce to be supervised by a management body compose from all sectors.
The city will also provide the farmers with organic inputs and other farm requirements for sustainable production of organic commodities to be sold at the center. 
Altamarino urged all farmer association members to adapt organic farming technology and convert their conventional practices into organic treatment of soil improvements.
 Meantime, the City Agriculture Office conducted a techno demo initiative to farmer-recipients to generate sales from the production until the farmers’ next cropping season.
Under the Rural and Urban Organic Vegetable Production Project of the city, the famer associations received some farm inputs subsidy.  
The subsidy program recently launched by the city benefitted most of the farmer constituents and organic advocates.
 Altamarino said an organic fertilizer was being produced utilizing biodegradables from the dumpsite by fortifying the mixture with vermicast and natural fermented solutions to improve its microbial supplementations.
“To date almost all farmer constituents received Microbial Treated Supplement (MTS) subsidy for farm development and improvement of their crop production and to augment farm revenue through production of organically grown commodities,” said Altamariano.
He added MTS Organic Bio Fertilizer is pack in 50- kilogram bag, a soil conditioner proven to improve soil texture and convert conventional practices of rampant chemical users. 

While organic inputs are applied only once from transplanting up to maturity of the crops it is cheaper than application of chemical base fertilizer, he said. (mbcn/JCT/PIA7-Negros Oriental)