Here’s Rice Growing With Trees On Top Of Climate Change. I Have An Even Sweeter Idea!
From a Facebook sharing by PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar, “Climate Change Bigger Threat Than Covid-19 – Red Cross[1]” (AFP, 18 November 2020, Manila Times), here is what Red Cross is saying:
The world should react with the same urgency to climate change as to the coronavirus crisis, the Red Cross said on Tuesday, warning that global warming poses a greater threat than the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
Publicly, relief operations are underway; privately, donations in cash or kind are being sought for the residents of the provinces of Cagayan & Isabela in Northern Luzon.
From a Facebook sharing by Nestor V Saludo, I noted “Reforestation Thru Agroforestry” presented in a webinar on 24 October 2020 by Forester Romana Atienza Mauricio of the Ecosystem Research & Development Bureau, ERDB, which is under the Department of Environment & Natural Resources, DENR. So, thinking of ERDB & DENR and devastating floods from typhoons during the wet season, my recommendation is
Agriculture Thru Agroforestry!
Rice growing with trees.
Trees as companion, as protection from gusts of winds in a storm. Farmers will be harvesting rice and fruits.
I thought I Filipino was the first to think of rice growing in an agroforest setting but not so. Already, the FAO has published Agroforestry In Rice-Production Landscapes In Southeast Asia: A Practical Manual[2] (downloadable as pdf from FAO.org). It was published in 2004 by the World Agroforestry Centre, 106 pages.
(upper image of trees & rice from FAO manual)
There is still another beautiful option:
Instead of raising rice, raise canes!
Instead of rice & trees, plant sweet sorghum.
Why, you ask. Because, I say: Sugar is sweet – sweet sorghum is sweeter!
In fact, I wrote about this crop some 13 years ago; see my “ICRISAT & The Profits Of Boom. Sorgo: A Rich Man’s Choice Of A Poor Man’s Crop,” (05 May 2007, iCRiSAT Watch, Blogspot.com). There I wrote about the:
(1)Environmental profits – Sweet sorghum thrives even on poor soil.
(2)Financial profits – Farmers can grow sweet sorghum well without fertilizer and pesticide.
(3)Employment profits – For farm hands and landowner if there is a distillery to buy the canes for biofuel.
(4)Multiplier profits – Earnings from sweet sorghum grains, jaggery (unrefined sugar), canes for cattle, syrup.
I visited Antonio Arcangel, head of Bapamin Farmer’s Cooperative, in March 2012 in his farm in Batac, Ilocos Norte and saw that they were already producing 10 products from sweet sorghum: cookies, flour, juice, liniment, shower gel, soap, sweetener, syrup, vinegar, and wine. How good are the products? Example: My Ilocano taste of the vinegar said, “Excellent!”
Why sweet sorghum vs climate change? It’s flood tolerant. Mr Arcangel said the stalks would set themselves upright after a flood, which rice cannot hope to execute!
But if you insist on rice agroforestry, at least it’s 2 birds with 1 stone: Adapting to climate change, as well as mitigating its ill-effects.@517
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