Bringing forages beyond feed resource boundaries: evaluating forages for soil conservation in the uplands of Bukidnon, Philippines

Forage technology was introduced by the Forages for Smallholders Project (FSP) in Malitbog, Bukidnon, Philippines in 1995. Forage was primarily introduced as improved animal feeds and was adopted by farmers who acknowledged the lack of improved and available animal feed for their livestock. But by year 2000, due to limited livestock projects and linkages available in the municipality, adoption of forages was challenged by the declining trend of forage expansion and abandonment of once productive forage plots. This scenario further led to the evaluation of the uses of forage technology. The project assessed the situation by promoting the multiple uses of forage technology beyond feed resource boundaries, and developed soil conservation options using forage technologies to answer the problems of declining farm productivity caused by massive soil erosion and soil degradation in the steep uplands of San Migara, Malitbog in the province of Bukidnon, Philippines. Participatory (collaborative) research is found to be effective in bringing together the knowledge and experiences of researchers and farmers in determining research and development agenda. This study exemplifies this, on which farmers and scientist evaluated contour plowing, mixed forage hedgerow and pure Setaria hedgerows for soil conservation against current farmers' practice of vertical plowing. Results showed that in the vertical plowing system, soil erosion rate averaged 59 tons/ha (660 kg/ha/day) in a single wet corn cropping season. Contour plowing reduced erosion rates by as much as 45 percent, while the use of forage hedgerows reduced soil loss by 60-67 percent. Corn yields on the contour plowing system (3.41 t/ha), pure Setaria hedgerow system (2.8 t/ha), and mixed forage hedgerow system (3.37 t/ha), were significantly higher than the yield of vertical plowed plots (2.21 t/ha). Among the four systems tested, mixed forage hedgerow proved to be the most promising soil conservation option, based on the joint evaluation of the researcher and farmers