Thursday, June 28, 2007 RP lagging in exportation due to farmers' non-adoption of GAP By Jane Cadalig
THE Philippines is lagging behind neighboring Asian countries in terms of exportation, and this is accredited to the farmers' lack of knowledge and non-adoption of good agricultural practices (GAP).
Nicomedes Eleazar, director of the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR), said the poor implementation of GAP among agricultural producers in the country lessen their competitiveness in the global market.
The implementation of good agricultural practices is one of the requirements for a commodity to penetrate the international market.
GAP includes practices that farmers need to follow in the production of agricultural crops, to ensure safe and wholesome products, while minimizing the negative impact of such practices to the environment and to the worker's health.
Dr. Edralina Serrano of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Los Baños, said as long as farmers do not adopt the GAP, they can never be globally competitive.
She said the manual for GAP was established two years ago, but this is not being implemented yet by a majority of farmers.
Among the reasons farmers are not implementing the GAP, according to Serrano, is the absence of incentives for those who are practicing it and the absence of product differentiation between GAP-compliant and regularly-grown products.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) is training at least two staff members in each of their regional field offices to certify farms that are complying with GAP.
The regional offices of the DA are tasked to disseminate the information on GAP to the farmers.
The DA, BAR and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (Bfar) hosted the second technology commercialization forum on Wednesday to disseminate information on research-generated technologies to farmers and fisherfolk.
