Sanchez refutes fertilizer claim

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu Vice Governor Gregorio Sanchez, Jr. through his personal aide on agricultural matter, Manuel Manuel, has refuted the claim of Provincial Agriculturist Necias Vicoy that the organic fertilizer owned by the vice-governor has lower contents of nitrogen than chicken dung.

On the December 8, 2010-issue of The FREEMAN, Vicoy was reported as showing to media the special assay results of analysis as conducted by the Regional Soils Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture – 7. The matrix reveals that among the six analyzed organic fertilizer, the one owned by Sanchez was the most expensive but its nitrogen contents of 1.85 is much lower than that of the chicken dung samples of 5.28 and 2.64.

Manuel pointed out that the report of Vicoy intentionally did not mention that the analysis of other organic fertilizers was done on June 22, 2009 while the analysis of the pro-biotic and pure organic fertilizer of Sanchez was one seven months after on February 17, 2010.

“The disparity of time made the analysis misleading and unreliable,” he said.

Manuel said that the Capitol’s intention to put down the fertilizer product of Sanchez against chicken dung is obvious.

Vicoy and Roldan Saragena, the operations division chief of Office of the Provincial Agriculture who gathered the sample, should know very well all about the methods of research, Manuel said.

Gerard Baron, an expert on organic fertilizer states that to evaluate the efficacy of an organic fertilizer, the nitrogen-phosphorous-potassium (NPK) analysis is only for chemo-synthetic and inorganic elements and is not applicable to organic fertilizer.

The important information for the efficacy of an organic fertilizer are the kind of micro-organism in the fertilizer material; the number of colony-forming units in the material and the health or the activities of the microbes.

Manuel agreed that while NPK analysis cannot assess the microbial activities of the organic fertilizer, because it only examines the inorganic NPK sources, in the material which are applied as direct and artificial nourishments to the plant.

The NPK can only be observed in plant tissues analysis and on its growth, he said.

Manuel concluded that the special analysis of DA-7 is not the appropriate instrument to measure the efficacy of the organic fertilizer.

“Gov. Gwen’s specialists are like measuring their body weights using the thermometer,” Manuel added. —  (FREEMAN)