Soil Testing: Essential for Maximizing Crop Yield

Blogger's Note: My professor and adviser, Dr. Paningbatan, is featured in this article with regards to the use of the soil test kit. The soil test kit, or STK, helps farmers to precisely apply fertilizers for better crop yield and less fertilzer wastage. Read on... 8-)

More money through soil analysis
Posted: 0:23 AM Mar. 12, 2004 Ernesto M. Ordoñez Inquirer News Service
URL: http://money.inq7.net/topstories/view_topstories.php?yyyy=2004&mon=03&dd=12&file=10

ACCORDING to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics, there are 11.1 million farmers in the Philippines. "However, fewer than 400,000, or four percent of them, do soil analysis," according to Eduardo Paningbatan Jr.

Dr. Paningbatan is currently the director of the agricultural systems cluster of the University of the Philippines in Los Baños (UPLB, the state school's agricultural college). This cluster is composed of the departments of soil science, agricultural education and rural studies, and the Research Institute for Farm Systems. He laments the very low usage of soil analysis, because he says this has one of the best returns on investment (ROIs) in agriculture today.

An example
Adoracion Guy of UPLB's soil science department tells the story of "barangay" [village] council chairman Maala of Bubukal village in the town of Santa Maria in Laguna province, south of Manila. Prior to soil testing, Maala used three bags of urea for his one-hectare rice farm. The soil test revealed his land lacked nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.

He therefore added five bags of complete (14-14-14) fertilizer and took out one bag of urea. Though this resulted in added fertilizer cost of 2,000 pesos, his rice yield, before milling, increased from 35 to 70 cavans. At seven pesos per kilogram, this meant an added income of 12,250 pesos, or a return of more than six times his additional 2,000-peso fertilizer investment.
Soil test desirability
Last Jan. 31, the Philippine Information Agency cited Department of Agriculture (DA) agriculturist Pamela Soza's report that 1,165 farmers availed themselves of the soil laboratory analysis provided by the DA in Region 11 (the Davao provinces in Mindanao). She also stated that "walk-in clients came from different parts of Mindanao and from as far as the Visayas." This attests to the increasing awareness of farmers regarding the desirability and potential profitability derived from soil analysis.

My own experience confirms this finding. In the early 1980s, when I took over our family farm in Balayan town in the province of Batangas, south of Manila, I found out that very few of my relatives did soil analysis. Aside from the fact that the benefits of soil analysis were not fully understood, one had to go a great distance to a soils laboratory.

Nevertheless, I chose to do a soil analysis on our land, which had never been done. The sweet potato crop I planted yielded 30 tons a hectare, six times the national average. Though this was partly due to the sweet potato variety I used from the Visayan State College of Agriculture (ViSCA), much of the reason for the high yield was the precise fertilizer combination suggested by the soil analysis.

The good news
Today, the inconvenience of traveling great distances to a soil laboratory has been solved. Paningbatan and Guy spearheaded a project to produce a very affordable soil test kit (STK). The STK is a miniature portable laboratory consisting of chemical reagents, color charts, test tubes and an instruction manual on how to conduct an on-the-spot soil test. It gives advice on how best to deal with the results, such as what fertilizer is suitable for any given soil type and crop. The cost per kit ranges from 850 to 1,000 pesos.

The STK has been the recipient of three prestigious awards, including: Outstanding Development Award in Agriculture, Outstanding Extension Community Service Award, and Outstanding Extension Project Award. It was also one of the three reasons the DA's Bureau of Soils and Water Management under Director Rogelio Concepcion won the 2002 Pag-Asa Award [Hope Award]. The soil test kit under Dr. Lauro Hernandez combined with the related balanced fertilization strategy under Dr. Perfecto Evangelista and the water impounding system under engineer Rodolfo Lucas to win this award.

Since an STK can be used for at least 25 samples, Paningbatan says this can be used by 25 farmers with one-hectare farms. At 1,000 pesos per STK, this means a farmer has to invest only 40 pesos to determine the appropriate fertilizer for his or her farm. As shown earlier, this can mean an added income of as much as 12,250 pesos, as in the case of Maala.

The bad news
The bad news is that there are fewer than 15,000 STKs available in the country today. Paningbatan has transferred this technology to agencies such as the DA and the Department of Agrarian Reform. However, because of budget constraints, the government has been able to produce or procure only a limited number of STKs. There is no lack of demand for STKs. When I visited the different regions during my term as DA undersecretary, I found out that there was often a severe lack of STKs because of the very limited budget available for it.

Business and agriculture
Without soil analysis, agriculture can be a bad business. But soil analysis can make much of agriculture very profitable. The STK itself can be good business. However, it is regarded today more as an agriculture service given by the government than a profitable venture.

Paningbatan wishes to see a written formal system where technologies such as the STK will be transferred to the business sector with the appropriate incentives given to the people developing these technologies. Spurred by the profit motive, these technologies will not remain underutilized but instead find extensive application among our farmers. This system will also provide the financial rewards to further motivate the technology developers, who often get nothing after their technologies are transferred to the field.

Businessmen should likewise invest their time and resources to systematically look at the wealth of agricultural technologies in UPLB and our other agricultural institutions. It is said that Filipinos developed the technologies and stop there, while the other countries get our technologies and benefit from their implementation. It is about time that we develop and implement a system of bringing business systematically into agriculture, especially when it comes to agricultural technologies. Focusing on the STK both for the technology developer and the farmer is suggested as a possible first step in this direction.

The author is chairman of Agriwatch, a private sector initiative; former undersecretary of agriculture, former undersecretary of trade and industry, and former chairman and Cabinet secretary for Presidential Flagship Programs and Projects. For inquiries or suggestions, e-mail agriwatchphil@yahoo.com or telefax 02-8516635.
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