Agriculture

As if the setback it suffered from the massive non-compliance by hog traders/retailers of the maximum suggested retail price for pork, the Department of Agriculture is now expanding its MSRP experiment on eggs and garlic in the hope of better results. By now, the DA must realize that even with rice and other items before, it had miserably failed in …

Piqued by the non-compliance by retailers of the maximum suggested retail price for pork, the Department of Agriculture will pilot test a “tracing system” that would give retailers a card containing information about the hogs they would be selling. The card would contain information like origin of the farm, the traders, the transporters and other levels of the logistic chain. …

By DA Press Office Agriculture Secretary Francisco P. Tiu Laurel Jr. wants to totally overhaul the minimum access volume (MAV) for pork, which were formulated 30 years ago and has been exploited by some accredited importers. “We are reformulating the rules for MAV. The DA’s Policy and Planning Office is already on the job and they have to have an …

BEYOND ELLIPTICALBy Rose Marie de la Cruz Every administration talks about national greening, reforestation and environmental preservation and conservation– some of them in tandem with the business sector– but after each administration, the best results come only from those that use the local community in reforested area to care for the program. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources, under …

By Rose de la Cruz The Masungi Georeserve in Rizal is a favorite ‘grab’ for venture hunters from both government and private sector, giving the indigenous people and conservation groups a tough battle to preserve the remaining pristine and fragile ecosystem in the threatened conservation area near Metro Manila. The first formidable threat came in 2023 from no less from …

By Rose de la Cruz Bird flu (or the H5N1 strain) was first detected in China in 2013. But now another strain H7N9 is wreaking havoc in the United States, which first detected it in 2017 and had since been moving heaven and earth to contain it. According to a Reuters report written by Sybille de La Hamaide, the US …

Farmers belonging to the Philippine Tobacco Growers’ Association, led by Saturnino Distor, are pushing for the appointment of a tobacco czar who can combat the surge of illicit or smuggled cigarets into the country. Distor said “instead of our buyers purchasing more from us, smuggled products are taking a share of the market. Farmers are affected by this.” The illicit …

BEYOND ELLIPTICALBy Rose Marie de la Cruz After more than a year, I finally got to visit and interview rice farmers from Nueva Ecija about  their experiences using the biofertilizer technology of AgriSpecialist Inc. (ASI), which was granted (after six months of waiting) the certificate of product registration(CPR) for rice and corn only last January. Biofertilizer is among the prescriptions …

By Rose de la Cruz Unable to defend the wisdom of reducing tariffs on imported rice, which failed to result in lower retail prices, the government is now reviewing whether to continue implementing EO 62 (on reduced tariffs) or to raise them in time for the coming harvest season for the main crop in April. “To ensure our farmers are …

By Rose de la Cruz Decades of wanton trawling and destruction of seabeds and coral reefs mostly from commercial fishing vessels– many of them operating without permits, including those of recent years by Chinese fishing vessels– have led to the depletion of local fish stock, which necessitated the continued importation of mackerel, sardines and other species that used to teem …