The government is looking for bio-fertilizers and other import substitutes for urea and petroleum-based fertilizers in the face of rising prices of the commodity, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said yesterday.
Marcos said the government is also looking at technologies that could help raise the country’s agricultural production to attain food security.
“We’re trying to find import substitution for urea and petroleum-based fertilizers. We are looking at all the technologies available, including bio-fertilizers perhaps as an import substitute,” he said in a video message after his meetings with officials of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Health and the Philippine Statistics Authority yesterday.
In the same video, which was released by the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS), the President also shared the national timetable for the construction of farm-to-market roads (FMR) nationwide has been approved.
A joint administrative order (JAO) will be signed by concerned agencies within the month.
According to Marcos, the JAO will set the guidelines in making all FMRs interconnected with other infrastructure projects to ensure efficiency in the delivery of services and enhance agricultural programs. It will also kick-start the construction of the FMRs.
The OPS said the DA and the Department of Public Works and Highways, in partnership with concerned agencies, formulated a regional FMR network overlaying the proposed FMR projects with the Strategic Agriculture and Fisheries Development Zone/Network of Protected Areas for Agriculture and Agro-Industrial Development and production areas.
It added the two agencies have spearheaded an inter-agency workshop on locating and mapping agriculture and fisheries production areas, markets, trading posts, existing road networks and road conditions and the proposed FMRs.
OPS said as of October, a total of 43,223.17 kilometers (kms) FMR projects have been proposed and 67,255.46 kms of FMRs also been completed, or a backlog of 64,155.20 kms.
