Conservation-based farming practices in the Philippines

The concern for sustainable agriculture and natural resource management has reached a crisis level in the Philippines. Poverty and high population growth rate have created a situation where the fulfillment of the immediate basic needs of people rapidly degrades the very base of our production systems. The shortening of the fallow period, rapid deforestation rate, overgrazing, unreliable water supply and overutilization and misuse of agricultural chemicals indicate the non-sustainable trajectory in agriculture. In the marine ecosystem, destructive fishing methods, sedimentation and siltation, rapid decline of mangrove areas, pollution and unregulated tourism are causing degradation of this resource base. These conditions is exacerbated by a weak administrative system fanned by a prevailing socioeconomic and political system that allows exploitation of the production base inspite of the existence of laws and regulation for protection. There were also recently introduced conservation-based farming technologies such as rapid composting, strip cropping and agroforestry systems for both uplands and rainfed areas by the University of the Philippines at Los Banos - based Institute of Environmental Science and Management, Department of Environment and Natural Resources - Rainfed Resources Development Project and Department of Agriculture Hilly Land Project. Aside from implementing agencies of government, conservation-based farming practices are also being carried out by individual farmers and by farmer organizations. In the coastal areas, conservation-based practices are in the form of artificial reef and coral reef rehabilitation, mangrove reforestation and the use of the "magic hole" technology in Bohol. A co-evolution between the social, technological and bio-physical elements of the total farming system has taken place leading to sustainability.