UNILOX Far East Resources Inc. (UFERI) president Nicolas Paradies and Indonesia-based partner Lee Chown Yee of PT. Hanampi Sejahtera Kahuripan led the launching of TierraCoat fertilizer before a group of sugarcane planters and stakeholders at Sugarland Hotel in Bacolod City September 29.
Department of Agriculture-Negros Island Region Director Joyce Wendam graced the event and gave the farmers additional input about the new technology and other concerns on agriculture.
Paradies said their product is part of the family of fertilizer called the Premium Controlled Release Fertilizers where its salient feature includes the encasement of fertilizer in a shell of sulfur. Its job is to release the fertilizer slowly and in a controlled means.
He added that it has to be done that way because nitrogen or urea is a very volatile type of compound. When farmers use urea, it easily evaporates or leaches into the soil and when it evaporates, the farmer is just wasting or losing his money. And when it leaches to the soil, the farmer will not only lose his money but also make the soil increase its acidity.
Studies have shown that the use of urea in farming typically incurs losses from 40 percent to 65 percent of the urea because of its volatile nature and that’s a lot of wastage. The plant will not get the nutrition that it needs. But with the use of the technology, the encapsulation of urea in a shell of sulfur, the release is done very slowly and the plant takes it more.
When you introduce such kind of urea to the plant, the plant absorbs more and it will grow faster and the yields are much improved, Paradies said.
For the past three years, they have conducted many trials on sugarcane in the Island of Negros.
“What we have done is replace our fertilizer with traditionally used product and the yields were P14, 200 cost of fertilizer per hectare and the average tons of cane yielded was 74 tons,” he said.
By substituting this with TierraCoat, it costs the farmer about P9,420 more or P23,620 per hectare, but the yield was significantly increased to 84 tons of cane or 14 tons over the yields of the traditionally used fertilizer.
“When you do the cost benefit analysis, one could see that it costs the farmer about P9,420 more, but it gave him P31,360 increase per hectare which is more of the planters’ share. That’s already after netting out the mill share. The farmer’s net gain is P21, 940 per hectare and the productivity increase is really quite significant,” Paradies said.
Since this is a new technology, most of the farmers would still want to see this as a proven technology, he noted.
“Even though, we are in the early stage of development, there were progressive farmers in the province who started using TierraCoat and the market coverage, prior to the launch, is about 3,000 hectares of sugarcane farms. It is an encouraging number given the fact that Negros comprises about 200,000 hectares of land being devoted to sugarcane farming,” he said.
He urged the sugarcane farmers to try the new technology to help them unlock the optimum yield potential of their sugarcane farm, adding that the fertilizer is engineered to boost productivity.
TierraCoat fertilizer is being distributed by DC Cruz Trading Corp. with address at 158-C SRA Road, Singcang, Bacolod City, with contact nos. (034) 433-0177, 434-2029, and 434-3944.