DA asked to step into complaints of adulterated chicken dung
By Delmar Cariño
Northern Luzon Bureau
First Posted 00:48:00 08/22/2008
LA TRINIDAD, BENGUET – Complaints of adulterated chicken dung sold to vegetable farmers have reached provincial officials, prompting calls for the Department of Agriculture to intervene in the chicken dung trade here.
Board Member Apolinario Camsol said unscrupulous traders have taken advantage of farmers who have become dependent on chicken manure following the surge in the prices of commercial fertilizers.
“Farmers said sand, soil and rice hulls are being mixed with chicken dung sold to them,” he said.
He said some farmers call the adulterated manure as “Abu Tayap,” a spin from the Abu Sayyaf Group.
“Abu” is dust or ashes and “tayap” means rice hull in Kankanaey, the native tongue among the province’s farmers.
Prices of commercial fertilizers have soared from P800 to P2,000 a bag since January this year, while a sack of chicken dung costs only P150. This is double last year’s price of P70 to P80 last year, but farmers consider the increase manageable.
Big commercial poultry farms in lowland provinces are the sources of the manure brought and sold as “back load” of truckers who haul vegetables from the trading post here.
This town and nearby Tublay were the industry’s trading centers until lately when town officials here decided to impose an ordinance that banned the sale of chicken dung.
But agriculture officials were lukewarm to Camsol’s request that they intervene and inspect samples of bags of chicken dung sold to farmers.
George Bilanggo, Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority chief in the Cordillera, told Camsol that the FPA has no jurisdiction over the chicken dung trade since the commodity is being sold as a raw fertilizer.
“We can act only on processed fertilizer,” he said.
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