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Negros, organic bowl of Asia

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In the materialist way of agriculture, yield is what matters most. Yield with the least effort to produce crops. Quantity, size, spotlessness, polish and shine is what sells. Never mind what happens to the soil, to the water resources, to the air. Also set aside is what happens to plants and the animal kingdom, including humans as a result of chemical pollution.

When Rachel Carson (1907—1964) wrote her book Silent Spring, it paved the way for the modern environmental movement. She warned of the dangers to all natural systems from the misuse of chemical pesticides such as DDT (which was later banned), and questioned the scope and direction of modern science.

She showed that all biological systems were dynamic, and urged the public to question authority.

Already a threat to our beloved Negros Island is the push to introduce and plant genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Our legislators in the Province are being asked to revise the ordinance so that BT Corn can be planted. I wrote about this threat here (GMO a Threat in NegOr, Feb. 2).

The civic groups FENOr, Kinaiyahan Inc., and Tuburan Inc. sent a letter to the Board Members of the Province urging the Negros Oriental agriculture to remain GMO-free, while asking the legislators to review the laws supporting biosafety, and the Precautionary Principle which balances public health against economic benefits. It remains as a strategic farming goal to enhance instead our Organic Agriculture by growing food in healthy unpoisoned soil. Healthy soil as the basis of our health now and the future generation.

Visiting Maragusan years ago, I stood on the grounds where Dole and del Monte had leased lands for their banana plantations.

There was this acrid persistent chemical smell. The earth and stones had turned an unnatural color. The same acrid smell I also experienced in Sagada on their cabbage plantations. What sad places these were.

Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si shows great concern over pollution and climate change. Pollution from acidification of soil and water from fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and agrotoxins in general.

Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact, proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others. (Section 20, Laudato Si)

Negros Island, both Oriental and Occidental, have a dream. This is to become the Organic Bowl of Asia. In 2005, both Governors of the Island signed a memorandum of agreement to protect the biodiversity of the island. Banning GMO in planting materials, fertilizers, and inputs was in aid of the Organic Agriculture Act that Negros embraced.

That dream lives as was gathered in the hundreds of signatures to our petition to keep Negros Oriental agriculture GMO-free.

The dream to become the Organic Bowl of Asia lives on.

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Author’s email: [email protected]

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