Legumes in general are eyed by the Department of Agriculture (DA) as poverty reduction crops. When inter-planted with corn or rice, legumes can raise land use efficiency and farmers’ income. At a production cost of P27,030, a farmer may earn a net income of P22,970 out of a 2,000 kilo per hectare yield, given a P25 per kilo farm gate price.
Legume growing also supports a climate change mitigation measure called “conservation agriculture” which reduces soil tillage. With reduced tillage, carbon is stored in soil rather than emitted to the air.
The use of legumes will have a significant beneficial effect in reducing stress on the soil specially due to cropping intensity.
Leguminous plants have a give-and-take (symbiotic) relationship with a (soil) bacteria called rhizobia that thrive in the plant’s root nodules. Rhizobia can supply about 225 kilos (4.5 bags) of nitrogen per hectare per year or equivalent to input cost of P4,500,” said Rose Mary G. Aquino, Department of Agriculture (DA)-Cagayan Valley Integrated Agricultural Center (CVIARC) Peanut Project Leader.
Crops inter-planted with peanut usually have better performance even with low or no fertilizer application due to legumes’ nitrogen-fixing capability. This makes organic legume production possible.
In fact, peanut-white corn inter-cropping practices in Cagayan Valley involves organic farming. It does not use pesticide sprays or chemical fertilizers.
Aside from high protein content at 26 to 28 percent, peanuts are rich in B Vitamins, folate, niacin, and Vitamin E. It has the good fat that helps remove cholesterol from blood, consequently helping reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer.
For the region’s mungbean and soybean production after upland rice planting, the same chemical free rhizobia seed inoculants-dependent practice is adopted.
The legumes are supplanted with macro and micro-nutrients through spraying of organic foliar fertilizers.
One of such organic fertilizer is the humic acid — a complex mixture of different acids forming humic substances that come from soil (humus), peat, coal, and many upland streams. Another is the bacteria-mineral which is produced from bio-reacted manure. Seeds are soaked on this bacteria-mineral water to enhance germination.
Vermi-tea, the worm tea or the liquid extract from a worm bed, is sprayed on the legume plants as an anti-fungal agent and provider of trace elements in the legumes.
Cagayan Valley farmers have also learned to fight pest infestation in mungbean and soybean through biological control measures or insect management.
For soybean in particular, government eyes the organic soybean to be used for food and the conventionally-bred ones for feed milling.
BAR’s organic production of peanut and soybean is being implemented together with the organic farming group called Earthkeepers Foundation and Cooperative for Rural Development (CORDEV). Estrella Z. Gallardo, PSiJourn MegaManila
