MMSU, Batac City – The Department of Agriculture-Regional Field Office 1’s research paper titled: Enhancing Farmers’ Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change Through Community-Based Participatory Action Research On Climate Resilient Agricultural Technologies: The San Emilio, Ilocos Sur Experience was awarded third place during the 32nd Ilocos Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development Consortium (ILAARRDEC) on March 16-17 via zoom.
The research was conducted in three barangays of San Emilio namely Kalumsing, Lancuas, and Sibsibbu from 2017-2019. In these areas, farmers are found to be vulnerable to climate change based on the Climate Risk Vulnerability Map of the Province of Ilocos Sur.
In past studies, smallholder farmers with minimal livelihood alternatives were identified to be very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The 60 farmer-cooperators of this research belongs to this group.
Participatory Rural Appraisal was used to identify major climate hazards in the area – drought, typhoon, soil erosion, and landslides.
Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRA) technologies that could help farmers cope up with these climate risks were pointed out.
These were on the use of fermented feeds using locally available resources, use of Indigenous Micro-organisms (IMO) in crops and livestock production, crop-livestock integration, use of drought tolerant crops, use of stress variety of rice, root crop and fruit bearing tree production, use of organic fertilizer, drop irrigation, vermicomposting, mushroom production and value adding/commodity development.
The paper is authored by former AMIA focal person Dr. Mary Jane B. Alcedo, Dr. Jovita M. Datuin, Ms. Cathy B. Pastor, and Ms. Jocelyn Tabali.
### Photo credit to ILAARRDEC Ilocos Region
