After more than three years of repeated calls to declare Brgy. Sibulan in Toril as an organic agricultural zone, the proposal for the Ordinance is now at the City Council. The proposal has been discussed with Technical Committee on Organic Agriculture members and BLGU during first committee hearing under the Committee on Agriculture led by Councilor Marissa Abella on August 8, 2018.
The Sangguniang Barangay of Sibulan has reiterated the call to fast track the approval of the resolution they passed way back in 2014. The City Agriculturist Office also endorsed a draft recommended version of an Executive Order to the City Legal Office last April 26, 2018. But The City Legal Office clarified that under the Organic Agriculture Ordinance, the declaration of an organic zone necessitates an ordinance instead of an Executive Order.
Declaring Sibulan as an organic agriculture zone will protect it from encroachment and contamination of using chemical-based farm inputs and mining, including contamination of genetically-engineered crops and other similar activities as provided for in the Organic Agriculture Ordinance of Davao City.
Sibulan is home to third-party certified organic farms managed by the Foundation of Agrarian Reform Cooperatives in Mindanao (FARMCOOP) with 110.61 hectares of organic banana and 106.65 hectares of organic cacao and coffee exported to Japan.
The governing agricultural law in the Philippines, Organic Agriculture Act of 2010 or RA 10068, promotes the “implementation of the organic agriculture practice in the Philippines that will cumulatively condition and enrich the fertility of the soil, increase farm productivity, reduce pollution and destruction of the environment, prevent the depletion of natural resources, further protect the health of the farmers, consumers, and the general public and save on imported farm inputs.”