With soil degradation in the country now pegged at 38 percent, Senator Cynthia Villar warned that further soil destruction would adversely affect food production and food supply.
Due to this, Villar, chair of the senate agriculture and food committee, underscored the need to entice farmers on the use of organic fertilizers.
“The use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides,” the veteran legislator said, “causes damage to crops that eventually reduce crop production and loss of soil fertility.”
The seasoned lawmaker also said that 95 percent of our food comes from the soil so we need to make our soil healthy.
95 percent of our food comes from the soil so we need to make our soil healthy.
The lady senator further cited the high cost of inorganic pesticides and fertilizers that also resulted to the small earnings of our farmers.
“With composting of kitchen and garden wastes, we are not only helping environment, we are also helping the waste management efforts of our barangays and the cities and municipalities,” she related.
Villar, also chair of the senate environment committee, stressed that “zero waste” should be the target of every city, municipality and province.
“Waste composting is a very good start to reach zero-waste management,” she said during the turnover of rotary composter and hammer mill for composting facility (kitchen/garden wastes to organic fertilizer) to Barangay Aniban 2, Bacoor City.
That same day, the senator also gave the same composting equipment to Barangay Ligas 3, also in Bacoor.
Villar had started composting in her own city– Las Pinas, where she had distributed 75 composters now being used by 40,000 households.
The organic fertilizers they produced are being given for free to the farmers and those involved in urban farming or vegetable gardening.
For the past years, Villar, a known environmentalist, has been advocating composting of trash like kitchen wastes. Together with the Bureau of Soils and Water Management (BSWM), she has been going around the country to encourage farmers to produce their own organic fertilizer.