An Overview Of Our Solution
The Gahung-Gahung Organic –Cassava Farming System (GO-CFS), an innovative cassava farming system that empowers smallholder farmers thru optimal and organic agricultural land use. With GO-CFS, the farmers regenerate soil biodiversity and the environment, help sequester the soil carbon and preserve vast hectares of land for forests to grow. Ironically, the less the farmers utilize their farms, the more they get from them. The GO-CFS prescribes only one hectare for every farmer to raise cassava crops, including cover crops. A hectare of cassava farm can already produce substantial yield and can eventually provide sufficient regular income to every farmer. The GO-CFS fosters inclusive growth by enabling the poorest of the poor to be productive, brings hope to the farming profession and ensures food security for the present and future generations.
Who is this solution impacting?
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: Asia
General Information
Organization type
Government
Ecosystem (select all that apply)
Forests
Population impacted
50,000 people
Challenge
Size of agricultural area
5,000 hectares
Production quantity
60,000 tons per year
People employed
1000 farmers
Solution
Describe your solution
The GO-CFS is an innovative farming system that has guided farmers how to produce cassava crops starting late 2013. Instead of tilling large area in order to reap a big harvest, the GO-CFS prescribes optimizing land use in order to earn bigger income. The farmers need only a hectare to do GO-CFS, then they have to divide it into ten plots. They have to plant around 2000 stalks of cassava in every plot each month. This means it would take ten months to complete the planting of cassava in every hectare. In the 11th month, this monthly cropping system would result to monthly harvest and regular income. With a decent regular income, hundreds of farmer beneficiaries have already improved their living conditions. To make the GO-CFS sustainable, the farmers have since adopted organic agriculture system in their farms. At least once every three years, they replenish the lost nutrients of their soil by digging around one square foot and one-foot-deep hole where they could fill in with organic fertilizers serving as base for their crops. They have made organic fertilizers like compost, vermicast, carbonized rice hull and varied forms of herbal and marine concoctions for pest management. They have managed the pest of their farms to optimize farm productivity and protect bees and butterflies which serve as pollinators of their farms and surroundings. With organic farming, the farmers regenerate the soil and the surrounding environment.
Implementation
Describe your implementation
By optimizing land use and organic farming, the GO-CFS regenerates the soil, ensures sustainable harvest and regular income to the farmers, and assures the next generations of food security. By regenerating the soil, it reverses environmental degradation. By ensuring sustainable harvest and regular income for the farmers, it alleviates the poverty situation and improves the living conditions of the farmers. By giving hope to the farming profession, it lures the youth to be actively part of the agriculture sector assuring food security for the next generations.
To ensure the adoption of GO-CFS and the promotion of change, the provincial government did the following: It trained and deployed field workers to organize, train and coach farmers to practice the GO-CFS; It set up an office that provided micro-loan to the farmers, bridging them up to their first cassava harvest and regular income; It established a cooperative of cassava farmers, that serves as consolidator of the cassava harvests before forwarding them to San Miguel Corporation (SMC), a bigtime food processor; It solicited additional support from concerned municipal governments in terms of transportation and provision of planting materials. It negotiated with SMC to sign a Memorandum of Agreement that ensured the purchase of cassava chips at a fixed price, protecting the farmers’ interest especially during peak season.
The measure of success, that have been attained already, are the following: 1.) The farmers reap a monthly cassava harvest and earn a regular income that could even reach up to around US$400 a month. This does not include yet the income from cover crops; 2.) The farmers reap and sell organic products, including cover crops. 3.) The farmers can afford to buy for their basic needs and have better living conditions.
The enabling condition of the project implementation has been the persuasive leadership of the provincial officialdom.
External connections
The provincial government has engaged with some key partners in implementing the GO-CFS. First, it has engaged with the SMC which is the marketing partner. The MOA with SMC ensures the income of the farmers out of their cassava harvest. Second, it has engaged with the different municipal governments within Zamboanga del Sur which provided additional support the farmers, such as transportation and planting materials. The persuasive influence of the provincial officialdom has rallied all the mayors of the province to support the GO-CFS. Third, it has partnered with local women organizations to display the organic products in a weekend bazaar. Lastly, to enhance the impact of the GO-CFS, the provincial government has engaged with both the environment and agriculture department of the national government. Together with the environment department, the provincial government has enabled smallholders to reforest almost 80,000 hectares in the province since 2014. With the optimal land use strategy of the GO-CFS, vast tract of lands can be reforested without the risk of being slashed and burned for farming. With the agriculture department, it organized several coastal municipalities to engage in seaweed farming along the coastlines, which are now relatively safe from contamination by runoff water from upstream farms now converted to organic. By converting the farms to organic, poisonous chemicals do not reach the coastal waters anymore.
Results
What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?
The prevalence of chemical agriculture has degraded the environment, marginalized the small farmers, and compromised the food security of the next generations. Poisoning the soil organisms responsible for nutrient cycling results to eventual decline of yield capacity of the plants unless more chemical inputs are used in the farms. More chemicals lead to further and irreversible degradation of the soil. Besides, more chemical requirement means rising farm production cost. As the cost of production rises, the income of the smallholders shrinks making them poorer. Increase in yield and income only happens at the start. The farmers’ income declines as production cost gets higher. Because of this, most of the young generation cannot see hope and bright future in agriculture. The farmers are aging with an average age of 57. If this trend could not be arrested, there will be less farmers in the future, thus less food production, food shortage and hunger.
Describe the context in which you are operating
The pathetic agrarian context surrounding the GO-CFS calls for an intervention intended to help the smallholder farmers. Zamboanga del Sur lies in the Western region of Sothern Philippines. It has around 300,000 hectares of lowlands, mainly rice lands, and around 200,000 hectares of uplands, mainly corn lands. Cassava production is targeted in the uplands. Zamboanga del Sur has an agrarian economy replete with smallholders. Around 90% of the farmers, the smallholders, are poor in Zamboanga del Sur because of the negative effects of chemical agriculture described above. The smallholder farmers live below the poverty threshold which is pegged by the national government to about US$125 monthly income for a family of six. These farmers can hardly afford their basic necessities.
The Provincial Government of Zamboanga del Sur can only do so much to help farmers because the agriculture funds are handled by the national government. Only less than 50% of the mandated revenue allotment from the national government is given to LGUs. As result, the provincial government of Zamboanga del Sur can only do so much for the agriculture sector as it has yet to allot a budget for personnel, health care, social services, infrastructure, among others. Despite the lack of budget for agriculture, the provincial government has come up with the GO-CFS which is conceptualized by Governor Cerilles as its practical intervention to address the said challenges.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
By stopping the use of chemical, the GO-CFS regenerated biodiversity in the farms. Around 300 farms, which religiously practice the GO-CFS, are now showing increase of abundance and species richness of beneficial arthropods living above ground and earthworms, and thus improving the growth conditions of crops. These farms also indicate increase of different invisible microbes that serve as primary driving agents of nutrient cycling and regulating the dynamics of soil organic matter. This increase of beneficial organisms and micro-organisms are evident in the increasing harvest of the said organic cassava farms, including cover crops. Since last year, the farmers have had a display for sale of organic farm products in the capital city of the province. Free from pesticides, bees and butterflies, the key pollinators ensuring biodiversity of the farms and their surroundings, abound. Cultured bee colonies have mushroomed near the organic cassava farms, not to mention the wild bee colonies.
Language(s)
Visayan, Filipino, English
Water
Because of the GO-CFS, the groundwater beneath the farms and the waterways adjacent to it have become cleaner. No more chemicals could contaminate it, as these are prohibited in organic farming. Thus the people who depend to it for drinking have become healthier. Meanwhile, the marine life to where the water goes have also become less vulnerable to contamination or poison.
Food Security/Nutrition
Because of the GO-CFS, food security is assured in the present and in the future. For those who practice it today, they have a productive farm and regular income. From their farm, they get sufficient food. From their income, they can buy more food and other things they need. Moreover, by giving hope to the farming profession, the GO-CFS has attracted more youth to produce more food and prevent food shortage to happen in the future.
Economic/Sustainable Development
The total monthly income of all the beneficiary farmers is a substantial amount that goes directly to their pockets to spend for their daily needs. Infused into the local money circulation, this cassava money builds up the private sector, attracts more investors, and scales up the local economy to a higher level of development. With a thriving local market, more people will be hired for jobs and given opportunities. All sectors actually benefit when more money is infused in the local market.
Climate
The GO-CFS contributes in mitigating the effects of climate change by employing minimum tillage of one hectare per farmer, effectively sequestering carbon into the soil that significantly reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). With organic farming, it does away with chemical inputs whose production spawns a lot of GHG emissions. Lastly, it leaves more lands untouched that can be set aside for forest to grow that would help mitigate the effects of climate change.
Sustainability
The GO-CFS is a sustainable farming system. In the long run, it hardly needs grant funding and subsidies. Once the people start to benefit from the monthly harvest and regular income, they themselves will always find a way to sustain the GO-CFS. The driving force of the GO-CFS ultimately lies in the hands of the people who become convinced that they will benefit in sustaining this innovative system. In cases of boosting the processing facilities and equipment of the consolidator coop in order to develop more cassava by-products and to raise income of the farmers, grants or subsidies may be needed. But as far as the production side is concerned, the GO-CFS is sustainable enough.
Return on investment
The return on investment should be seen in view of the project impact to the people’s lives. The GO-CFS may cost a few millions of pesos from the part of the provincial government, but it is just fulfilling its mandate using people’s money. With the GO-CFS, the smallholders become empowered. With better purchasing power, they can buy what they need and have sufficient food to eat. Since they can already stand on their own economically, they can now make their own decisions. The poor may now be free to voice their opinion or vote without fear or favor whomever they are beholden to. In short, the program gives to the poor economic power that spawns political power. Indeed, genuine democracy happens when the people are no longer hungry.
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Replication and Scale
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
Replication of the GO-CFS has not yet been done before. However, smallholders in different parts of the world can easily replicate the GO-CFS, since it is a very low cost activity on the part of the farmers, albeit a bit more hard work is involved. Any farmer has always got in his one-hectare farm and in himself what it takes to do it. However, like what the provincial government in Zamboanga del Sur did, local governments or non-profit organizations just have to assist the people at the start to prime up the GO-CFS. They need to capacitate trainer-organizers who can train and guide the beneficiary farmers to implement the GO-CFS. They also need to find a way to link the producers to the market, like the MOA with the SMC. With regards the micro-loan program to prime up the farmers, it can be easily replicated also by any local government or funding organization, since it is only a matter of putting up a fund and organizing the key stakeholders to share accountability.