THE Provincial Government of Misamis Oriental is planning to introduce new agriculture technologies to small-scale farmers in a bid to boost the agriculture sector in terms of production.
According to Jose Apollo Pacamalan, Provincial Agriculturist's Office (Pagro) head, they are eyeing two greenhouse technologies: the drip irrigation and hydroponics.
Pacamalan said these technologies will provide solution to the issue on the lack of agricultural land in Misamis Oriental.
“Right now, because of the issue na lumiliit na ‘yung areas for farming, dumadami yung mga tao who want more food, nag increase ‘yung persons who can buy more food,” Pacamalan said.
“The idea is, producing more with less land. Less land, more production,” he added.
Drip irrigation is a technique in which water flows through a filter into special drip pipes, with emitters located at different spacing. Water is distributed through the emitters directly into the soil near the roots.
Hydroponics involves growing plants without using soil, feeding them on mineral nutrient salts dissolved in water.
These greenhouse technologies will be introduced not only to small scale farmers but also to the household level.
“The reason we are studying that is because later on, we need, the same reason, we don't have enough area in Misamis Oriental so we need to have advancements in terms of learning the technology and at the same time, developing a system na mas household-based para we don't need a large plot of land to produce food,” Pacamalan said.
The Pagro head said they already started the planning, designing and technical preparation for the technologies until December of this year.
They will be partnering with the Department of Agriculture, universities such as Xavier University and University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines, and private sectors.
In the first six months of 2019, January to June, Pacamalan said they will set up trials of the said technologies and the next six months, July to December of 2019, they will start putting up household to test the technologies in terms of capacity building and improving the system.
He also mentioned that they are looking at Opol, Gitagum, Libertad, Tagoloan, Magsaysay, and other areas where the land area is limited and where poverty incidence and malnutrition is prevalent.
Pacamalan said in 2010, the greenhouse technologies will be implemented in the province.
“That means by 2020, we'll have a number of farmers who will be implementing the system. Our next step is to link the farmers to the market, to make sure that they are connected with market, like supermarkets, and vegetables are being sold in the public market,” he said.