organic agriculture

Doing official errand, I had a chance to talk to Miller Bicaldo, member of the National Organic Agriculture Board and farmer cooperative manager par excellence. Easy to approach and very down-to-earth, his invariably keen observations reminded me that the Organic Agriculture Act envisions a 5% increase of Philippine agricultural farms practicing organic farming by 2016.
 

The Department of Agriculture (DA) may have switched on the gears that led to the approval of the organic agriculture in 2010 with the signing of Republic Act No. 10068 otherwise known as the Philippine Organic Agriculture Act, but both the public and private sectors have stakes in organic agriculture (OA).

As I have been oriented on how organic farming is being practised, I am for it.

Visiting some organic farms recently convinced me that we can go back to the way things were. 
I was amazed with the food that we tasted, with the drinks they gave us. With simple preparations and without artificial seasonings, they tasted so good. That's why slowly I am doing it at home.

For years, since there are a lot of instant foods, fastfood chains available, we have been all used to it. All our children have been used to it too.

I am not a farmer, I did not even grow up in a farming community. But I get to learn some farming techniques when I started to work at the Agricultural Training Institute about 15 years ago (whew, that's surely a lot of learnings and realizations I should have right now).
 
At first I thought I wouldn't enjoy agriculture, the very reason why I didn't focus my elective courses in college on agriculture, but I took some agricultural economics instead. Little did I know, you wouldn't learn the economics of it if you have no knowledge on farming.
 

Three great days in Bacolod. Taking part in a once-in-a-sweet-while workshop on organic agriculture in beguiling, bountiful Bacolod gave me three good reasons to go gaga over organic.