By IPS Correspondents
PANAMA CITY, May 30 1998 (IPS)

Organic farming is becoming increasingly popular in Panama but agriultural experts say it will be years before it becomes a real alternative to the large-scale production of food.

Most of the public even is unaware that some 100 producers in the highlands of the province of Chiriqui, west of the capital, have recently formed an association to promote organic agriculture.

Lourdes Gaytan, president of the Group of Organic Farmers of Cerro Punta (GORACE), said that for now, the association is taking its the initial steps, like producing organic fertilizers and some organic foods. In terms of food production, GORACE is currently in the stage of creating the home-marketing chains, especially in the capital city, where the potential market of consumers is concentrated.

All members of GORACE, as well as other farmers from the Cerro Punta region in Chiriqui, are producng and using ertilizera and composts based on herbs, dry leaves, sawdust, ash, rice husks, manure and coffee pulp.

The result of that mix is an organic fertilizer that is “rich in carbon and nitrogen”, said Gaytan, praising the virtues of the composts used by the farmers who practice “clean agriculture” to produce foods without agro-chemicals.

For now, there is no data on the number of consumers, hectares or the volume produced without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, but Gaytan said that the system is gaining in popularity. Beides reducing production costs s organic composs are made on the producer’s own farms, they ar produced without any danger to health or the environment.

In other regions of Panama like in the central province of Cocle small farmers combine the use of organic fertilizer with the sowing of worms to help restore the soil.

Francisca Rodriguez, who owns a small parcel of land near the city of Anton, about 140 west of the capital, said that she has been farming without burning or using fertilizer for the past four years, and that the results are “very good”.

Guided by a program for soil conservation conducted by the Ministry of Agricultural Development (MIDA) together with the Catholic organization Caritas, Rodriguez has managed in only four years to become self-sufficient in vegetables, rice, and beans and to have a surplus for sale, even though the prices she gets “are low.”

But in other regions, like in the Altos de la Mesa, a town located on the border between Cocle and the province of Panama, some 10 families are supporting themselves on their own production of flowers and vegetables cultivated with natural fertilizer.

Ezequiel Rodriguez, president of the Producers’ Association of Altos de la Mesa, explained that what they do is “take advantage of the resources which sometimes are not taken full advantage of, like leaves and chicken droppings”.

Despit the advances in organic agriculture, an expert from the Panamanian Institute of Agricultural Research, Jaime Espinosa, believes that this method of cultivation has its limitations. Besides the fact that the price of the products obtained through organic agriculture are usually higher, Espinosa cautioned that without the use of agro-chemicals, close to 70 percent of food production world-wide could be lost.

Although he did praise the virtues f organic agricultural, Espinosa commented that the “current trend is towards the use of small amounts of agro-chemicals that have few adverse effect on the environment and people”.

He explained that experiments are being conducted with the application of small dosis of between 10 and 50 grams per hectare of crops, which, if compared with the average of one kilgam per hectare currently being used, “is a significant advance”.

Colombian agricultural expert Jairo Restrepo, who has been promoting organic farming in Panama and other Central American countries, pointed out that in countries like the United States, Canada and several European nations, there are about 4 million hectares of land cultivated through this system.

In Latin America, according to Restrepo, there are some 200,000 farms which produce food organically.

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