NAGA CITY---Pushing further their advocacy to mainstream natural products in the market, practitioners of organic farming here have opened an organic market along the fastest growing commercial strip of Magsaysay Avenue in this city.

        They call themselves “Organik Bikol Advocateurs Network, Inc.” or Oban, the group of organic farming practitioners here who took the bold step to open their own weekly two-day market of organic products with the foremost objective of promoting lifestyle change, rather than profit, so they say.

        “It’s more on the promotion of philosophy of changing lifestyle for better health and the principle of healing Mother Nature that drive us to practice organic farming system. It’s actually a breakeven business,” enthused Sabas Mabulo, an Oban member and practitioner of organic farming for two years now.

        Mabulo has sold Sunday some 20 natural free-ranged indigenous chicken on the second day of the first organic weekend market. He said the chicken that sold like hotcakes have been raised from 6-8 months period in a 11.7-hectare organic farm in San Fernando, Camarines Sur.

        He said they raise fowls and livestock animals and grow root crops, indigenous vegetables and fruit trees using natural compounds and micro-organisms from locally sourced raw materials like dung from carabao and cows. They concoct their own liquid and solid fertilizers and pest resistance enhancers to improve yield and combat pests and diseases, he revealed.

        The farm that Mabulo manages and administers is owned by Christian Life Community, the Catholic group that supported his candidacy against presidential son Diosdado “Dato” Arroyo in the 2007 congressional race in the first district of Camarines Sur. After his defeat, he has devoted his time and energy practicing organic farming until he got connected to practitioners in Camarines Sur who now comprise the Oban.

        Weekly 2-day organic market

        Rosalina Tan, interim president of Oban and chairperson emeritus of Organic Producers and Trade Association of the Philippines (Optap), revealed that the idea of establishing the weekly two-day organic market here materialized from the concept already in operation for years of pioneering natural food advocate Mara Pardo de Tavera, president of Optap.

        Pardo de Tavera has pioneered in 1994 the first weekly organic market at the old Greenbelt, Makati City in an unutilized space the Ayalas allowed her to use to mainstream organic products in the market. At present she operates organic markets in Barangay San Lorenzo Market, Rustan’s Supermarket, Rockwell, Ayala Center, Forbes and Alabang Town Center.

        Tan said the organic product market at present is still very small with less than one percent of the market pie of the total market supply of food products.

        She said the organic market follows a standard product quality that includes the adherence to sell products that do not have harmful carcinogenic ingredients, synthetic chemicals, preservatives, additives and growth stimulants which the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement (Ifoam) and other international groups have set.

        The two-day weekly organic market on Saturdays and Sundays is held here along the Magsaysay Avenue in newly constructed stalls built by Cong. Luis R. Villafuerte, a self-confessed health food adherent and advocate who said that he has launched a promotion project that would give prizes to top nine organic crop producer barangays in the second district of Camarines Sur.

        For the meantime, Tan said, the supply of organic products the weekly two-day market would sell come from the members of the Oban as they still have to create a mechanism to validate products suppliers outside of their organization.

        Linkage

        Mabulo said the linkage among the organic farmers here has consolidated their efforts to establish the organic market at the same time that it serves as channel to exchange knowledge and information regarding practices of organic farming system.

        “The biggest challenge is climate change, the unpredictable weather pattern, like when rain comes when it is less needed. We are conceptualizing ways to adapt to the unpredictable weather pattern with the idea of building better drainages in farm areas where crops with low tolerance to so much water are planted, for example,” Mabulo said.

        He said another way of adjusting to climate change is growing crops in low-tech greenhouses.

        Ping Federis, one of the most-sought after models of the 1980s and now an organic farming practitioner for six years, agrees with Mabulo that the challenge of climate change has indeed brought toll to her organic farm in Magarao, Camarines Sur, that she said wiped out all her growing indigenous papaya.

        Federis said she has tried growing several crops including eggplants, tomatoes, pepper, beets, leeks and Brussels sprouts but found out she can sustain producing and harvesting organic lettuce on a weekly basis by calendaring the planting and harvesting.

        She explained that it is learning by doing to go back to natural farming system that takes into consideration the effects on the environment and the body and the learning process is continuing, she added. She said it becomes a vocation and mission for her.

        “It’s breakeven or a little earning,” Federis laughs.

        Trust and confidence

        Pardo de Tavera shared that to sustain an organic market, one must be very strict with the quality of products sold to safeguard and maintain the trust and confidence of the clients who have chosen to change the products they use and food they eat in favor of good health, ecology and environment.

        She narrated that one of the pains of establishing a quality-proof organic market was to have cheating stall tenants in her first organic market in the old Greenbelt Makati. She said she immediately terminated the contract of her erring tenant, whom she said was more interested on profits than the advocacy part.

        Pardo de Tavera confessed the organic products she sold have been tagged as high-end products only the A and B crowd could afford. But she retorted that adherents and consumers of natural food would not hesitate to buy expensive health products in exchange of cheap ones.

        She said international groups of organic advocates and practitioners even incorporated the absence of child labor in production of organic products in the quality standards.

        Pardo de Tavera once owned an organic store in New York before she settled down in the Philippines and embarked on a self-appointed mission of continuously advocating natural food to help heal bodies and the earth. She declared the demand for organic products worldwide surely has to go up because of the growing movement of people wanting to change lifestyles.


GOING ORGANIC. A group of nature-loving organic farmers in Camarines Sur markets organic products every Saturday and Sunday each week along Magsaysay Avenue, beside Avenue Square in Naga City to buoy up advocacy on natural food and products. PONS CAUDILLA