FOREWARNED is forearmed. The Office of the Provincial Agriculturist knew that El Niño was coming and that Negros Occidental should brace itself for pest infestations that come after a long dry spell.
Early this year, I wrote that the OPA should monitor possible outbreaks of various plant pests and diseases such as rodents, rice black bug, locust, army worms and other sucking insects that usually attack farmlands during and immediately after droughts.
In fact, Provincial Agriculturist Igmedio Tabianan warned sometime in February of this year that the province should adopt mitigation measures, before the dry spell effects worsens and government spending is curbed by the election ban. Recently, he assured farmers that such infestation is normal especially with the onset of the monsoon after a long drought.
The first of the predictions are coming to pass. Armyworms Murcia and Silay City, and now are attacking Candoni and the cities of Cádiz, Escalante and Kabankalan.
Armyworms feed on food crops at night. When the food supply is gone, the horde invades a new site. Hence, the name "armyworm." They can destroy an entire plant in just one evening, and can produce as many as three generations in a year.
Since the OPA knew infestations could happen and in keeping with the provincial government's organic food bowl program, it should have braced the Negrense farmers with organic pest management measures.
But no. Provincial Agriculturist Igmidio Tabianan advised pest-stricken farmers to inadvertently (or surreptitiously?) let organic agriculture fly out of the window. He advised them to spray insecticides on rice, corn and sugarcane fields. That's lending synthetic chemicals a new lease in life in organic Negros Occidental.
OPA could have trained farmers during the El Niño spell to set up light traps set up at night to attract a variety of flying insects such as army worms, cutworms, brown rice plant hopper, green rice leaf hopper, rice black bugs, and rice stem borers.
The beauty of light traps is that they use indigenous materials instead of the more expensive synthetic insecticides recommended by Tabianan. Farmers can make a tripod construction from bamboo poles embedded firmly into the ground. Then farmers can suspend a lantern from the top of the construction over a bowl of water with a little oil in it.
Tabianan could also have recommended the use of garlic spray. The concoction is particularly good against army worms and can also kill nematodes if garlic liquid dreanches soil or batches. Or the OPA could have prepared the farmers with ricefield-duck combinations. Unlike humans, ducks treat armyworms as sumptuous manna from heaven.
Organic practitioners and advocates know that pests and diseases are part of the natural environmental system. They promote agrobiodiversity to strike a balance between predators and prey that relates them in the food chain. This is nature's way of controlling populations.
But his proposal to use insecticides is tantamount to a scorched-earth policy. The Tabadianan solution calls for collateral damage because the chemicals kill not only "pests" but also what organic farming advocates call "beneficials" such as spiders.
I would strongly suggest that as head of a key stakeholder for promoting organic agriculture in Negros Occidental Tabadianan learn from his staff and other colleagues on more environment-friendly pest management system. Otherwise, he'll be providing a disservice to a key food security program of the provincial government and a great service for multinational agrochemical companies.
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