The governor added rice-duck farming system is one of the projects in agriculture his administration is working on and asserted the province has great potential to make rice-duck farming in Zamboanga del Sur a premier research center in Asia and in the world.
“We are planning to send official communication to Japan for possible assistance,” Cerilles also disclosed, noting the financial requirements of a formal, world-class agricultural research center.
Cerilles inspired the farmers all over the province to integrate rice cultivation and duck-raising on the same piece of land.
“The scheme enables the farmers to produce not only rice but also duck meat and the exotic balut or duck eggs from the integrated farm,” said the governor.
Agrarian reform communities and agrarian reform beneficiaries, as well as other private farmers are encouraged to hold pilot testing plots to try the system.
Farmers in Tawagan Sur of Pagadian City and Tawagan Norte in Labangan said they have integrated rice-duck farming for generations and that said and that they have produced substantial volume of rice and subsidiary products of duck meat and duck eggs per hectare.
They experienced that raising ducks and rice simultaneously helps control weed, weed seeds and harmful insects through ingestion, hence, they reduce the use of herbicide and pesticides.
It was learned that some palay farmers do not raise ducks but merely allow ducks owned by other raisers to roam around their ricefields. The process begins when 20-day-old ducklings are released to newly prepared plots. The ducklings were allowed to stay for an hour or two at early morning. After a few days, the ducks can stay from morning until evening.
In addition to cow dung, duck manure also serves as an excellent organic fertilizer, which provides all essential nutrients to the palay. Research shows organic farming raises the levels of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium and sulfur of the soil, thus, increasing the yield on palay.
The provincial government has been campaigning for the use of biological pesticide and organic fertilizer to boost agricultural production.
On environmental issue, the rice-duck farming system is believed to be toning down global warming. Previous studies show that the presence of ducks in the rice paddies effectively reduced the emission of the greenhouse gas methane, which is produced when bacteria decomposes organic matter.
Studies on global warming revealed that 25% of global methane emissions from human activities come from livestock and from the decomposition of animal manure. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide.
The constant paddling of ducks effectively suppresses methane emission from rice paddy fields as pointed out by Chinese scientist Tsing Hua who claimed that the “methane emission is proportional to the amount of methanogens in the soil.” His research showed that the seasonal law of variation of the amount of methanogens in paddy field was consistent with methane emission from paddy field.
He stressed that methanogens was one of the main factors affecting the amount of methane emission from paddy field, and that the rice-duck system has suppressed the production of methanagens through breeding duck in rice fields.
Cerilles believes rice-duck farming is a promising method for farmers to earn more from higher palay production and from raising ducks. The growers can also save from the soaring prices of chemicals used to combat harmful pests in farmlands. Organic farming also reduces environmental degradation in the countryside. (By Neil Michael Dablo)
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