EITHER BY DESIGN or utter ignorance, there has been rampant retrofitting or misclassification of alternative soil rejuvenators/revivers at the Department of Agriculture by allowing companies making biofert out of purely organic content (manure), humus, fungus or singular bacterium to be labeled as biofertilizer and thus qualify for an allocation in the P2-billion budget from the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund.
President Marcos has been pushing for biofertilizer in his previous SONAs as a partial replacement for urea (a fossil-fuel based chemical fertilizer which had long been used in agricultural lands causing its acidity and near-unusable state). The push also intends to help farmers save on production cost by using Pinoy-made bioferts and soil enrichers to generate a local industry that would create jobs and save the country’s precious foreign exchange.
MARKET REQUIREMENTS
Because of the massive retrofitting/misclassification, firms claiming to produce biofertilizers are getting a big budget for their products that are distributed to different regions of the country, which are then deployed to municipalities, cities and towns for their recognized farm cooperatives and clustered farms.Â
Under the now-shelved Masagana Rice Industry Development Program, such products must have undergone field trials and technical validations, the firms must provide extension services (to train farmers on proper usage of the product) and laboratories with capacities to meet market requirements.Â
Sadly, some of these registered firms have been put up in just six months at backyards, garages or roofed open fields and some are manned by non-technical hands.
Sadly, some of these registered firms have been put up in just six months at backyards, garages or roofed open fields and some are manned by non-technical hands.
LOCAL BIOFERT FARM
Last year, nearly 89 percent of the P2 billion biofertilizer budget went to imported biofertilizers — from China, US, Japan, Thailand and India — but for this year, focus will be local manufacturers that bidded to supply DA with this input.
Although PhilGeps is the one that registers and lists the potential bidders/products, it is the DA that validates/confirms the content of products being registered. Bidding for the local biofert pie is ongoing.
Though the budget for biofertilizer looks awesomely huge to save the farms from digression of soil fertility and productivity, industry sources say 80 percent of the budget of RCEF for fertilizer (biofert or not) is decided by the central office while the remaining 20 percent is partitioned to the regional managers to apportion to agricultural offices under their jurisdictions to scout for local suppliers of biofertilizers to be distributed to clustered farmers.
A FERTILIZER SCAM?
There have been cases of under-deliveries (contents do not match the specs on the labels) and some even ghost deliveries of biofert to farmers. (Sounds like the fertilizer scam during a past administration).
The DA should just have pursued in earnest the MRIDP, which underwent the fine toothed comb of past Congress and for which the budget has been properly justified and commitments for transparency has been duly signed for.
Alas, the program — including the voucher system and the use of interventions monitoring cards both aimed for transparency — had been scrapped after one crop season.