D.A Aids Onion Farmers with Kelp-Based AMO Fertilizer

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

BELEAGUERED BY ARMYWORMS THAT GNAWED HUGE ONION FARMS

BAYAMBANG, Pangasinan - The Department of Agriculture frantically helps the farmers of this major onions producing town in the country with a kelp based fertilizer cum pesticide after the dreaded Fall Armyworms decimated roughly 700 hectares of their crops.

Jovy Datuin, Regional Technical Director for Research and Regulations, said in a media interview that those under siege farmers would be given a kelp based pesticides to combat the plague.

She explained the seaweed based pesticide will rejuvenate the affected onions by increasing their plants’ brix or sugar content thus starving to death the pests.

 FALL ARMYWORM (Spodoptera frugiperda) is a lepidopteran pest that feeds in large numbers on leaves and stems of more than 80 plant species, causing major damage to maize, rice, sorghum, sugarcane, onion but also to other vegetable crops and cotton. Photo Credit: Radio Dabanga)

 Upon hearing the media interview of Datuin, AMO Plant Growth Enhancer Manager Eric Acuña cited to this writer that his product is the only kelp based fertilizer that is being sold in the market in Region-1.

He said that Datuin told GMA-7 Television in October 2019 how a seaweed based fertilizer significantly increased the harvest of rice farmers in Sual, Pangasinan while they reduced their expenses.

“Tumaas po ang ani nila and saka iyong cost bumaba siya,” declared to GMA-7 regional television by Dr. Datuin, who was then the chief Science Research Specialist of the D.A in Region-1, after a farm trial there of AMO Plant Growth Enhancer.

Datuin said that despite the farmers not using insecticide, the Department found out that the root development and yield of the palay hike.

Acuña, a former congressman and a lawyer, told this newspaper about the efficacy of his product when he and the then Sual Mayor Roberto Arcinue piloted it there in a countless of hectares

In Bayambang town there are 1,500 hectares being planted with mostly red onions while almost 100 hectares are utilized for white onions.

After the army worms devastated many onions here the price of the red varieties spiked this month from P40 to P45 a kilo in farm gate price.

BROCHURE – The brochure of AMO Plant Growth Enhancer panned by the camera of GMA-7 regional television when it reported in Sual, Pangasinan how AMO strengthened the root development of the palay, thickening of rice straw, vigorous and sturdier rice plant, and yield a buffer harvest.

Farmers here said the Armyworms wrought havoc to their products in the last week of December 2020 while they were still recovering from bulb rot and onion twister which are common diseases affecting onion’s bulbs.

These pests  landed at the plants in nigh time and breed in grassy patches there. A female worm could lay up to 1,000 eggs that could turn into a million worms. Then they suck the sap from onion leaves that kill the plants.

Each of the beleaguered farmers here spent P400,000 for farm inputs and pesticides every hectare to drive away the Armyworms. The expenses, the farmers said, more than doubled their normal expenses of less than P200,000 in a hectare.

READ RELATED ARTICLE: 

D.A Exec. Certifies How Seaweed Fertilizer Spikes Palay Harvest