Marcos orders more soil testing centers

PRESIDENT Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. has ordered the Department of Agriculture (DA) to make more soil testing centers across the country to help boost farmers’ productivity.

“We lack soil analysis,” he told agriculture officials in a meeting on Tuesday, according to a statement from the presidential palace on Wednesday. “We cannot tell the farmers how much fertilizers to use. We cannot give them any advice because we don’t know ourselves what the condition of the soil is.

The Agriculture department had pushed soil mapping and agricultural liming initially in Luzon areas as part of a program to expand the sugar industry. “That soil mapping actually applies to all crops,” Mr. Marcos said.

There should be at least one soil testing center in every region to guide farmers to crops suitable to their lands, he said.

The agency said restructuring efforts were under way to help increase the number of soil testing centers. It is eyeing 12 facilities by next year, the palace said.

Mr. Marcos in February led groundbreaking rites for a P250-million state-of-the-art soil laboratory in Agusan del Sur in southern Philippines.

The soil laboratory, touted as the first of its kind in the country, was designed to conduct physical, chemical and biological characterization of soils through advanced analytical capabilities.

The laboratory with a floor area of 1,687 square meters was designed to analyze 50-100 samples daily. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza