By Romer S. Sarmiento
TUPI, SOUTH COTABATO - A farmer here has been lauded a second time as the most outstanding corn farmer in the Gawad Saka Award.
Jose F. Lorenzo’s love affair with farming started more than 30 years ago. Since then, he has raised six children through farming alone.
Mr. Lorenzo only reached high school because he was smitten by the idea of working the land, a decision he does not regret.
"I really love to plant and agriculture for me is about understanding nature and how it works. There’s the best season to plant and what to plant," Mr. Lorenzo told BusinessWorld while tending his farm.
The 52-year-old farmer practices crop rotation on his farm that uses organic methods 80% of the time.
"With organic farming, your production costs are significantly reduced. Organic inputs can be found on the farms; they’re nature-provided if only you know how to utilize them," Mr. Lorenzo said.
Let the leaves of harvested crops rot and you have a natural fertilizer and then there are also animal manure, he added. Chicken manure is particularly abundant in the town given the many poultries that operate in the area.
The secret to his success in corn farming, Mr. Lorenzo said, is really in rotating crops on top of practicing a mostly organic farming method.
He now maintains at least 20 hectares of land from just two hectares when he first started. At the farm near his house, Mr. Lorenzo plants not just corn but also eggplant, cauliflower, broccoli and bell peppers.
His average corn yield of five tons per hectare compared with the usual two to three towns elsewhere is because he rotates the planting with vegetables.
"In my long years of experience, I observed that when you plant the corn all over again, the harvests tend to go on a downtrend," Mr. Lorenzo said.
He also learns from other farmers or from study tours. Exposure to other farms came after he won his first Gawad Saka award in 2001. Mr. Lorenzo attributed his current win to his planting of the genetically modified Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn developed by US-based Monsanto Co.
He started planting the controversial Bt corn in 2002 despite the ban then declared by South Cotabato against the crop.
The opposition to Bt corn then, spearheaded by the local Catholic Church, was grounded on concerns of contamination to other crops and the risks to human health.
Mr. Lorenzo discouraged farmers from depending too much on the government for help in farm inputs.
"We should really depend on ourselves to increase our farm production and improve our situation in life. We should not just be farmers, we should also know how to find a better market," he advised.
© 2011 BusinessWorld Publishing Corporation
