This year, the Regenerative Agriculture & Climate Mitigation (RAC) Program of the Sugar Industry Foundation, Inc. (SIFI) signed with 8 new partners for Cohort 2 demo farms.
After several meetings and coordination with the farm managers and encargados, RAC completes their field validation and baseline data gathering for the 8 new partners. The data gathered includes farming practices, past crop year, averages, projected harvest dates of proposed demo farms, land preparation requisites, and target start dates of demo farms.
During this period, 2 green manure demo farms planted mung bean, 1 minimum tillage demo farm planted sugarcane, while the rest of the demo farms are scheduled for planting in the last quarter of 2023 up to the first quarter of 2024.
The RAC provided 40kgs of Argentina variety mung bean to the planters for the green manure demo farms. Farm-site sessions and actual demonstration of broadcasting mung bean were done as technical assistance to the planters and workers. The farmworkers expressed that this is a first experience of the technology for them.
On the other hand, the minimum tillage demo farm was planted with PSR 2000-161 sugarcane variety. A variation to the RAC protocol was also done during the planting. Instead of cane points, whole stalks (est. length of 1 meter each, equal to 4 cane points) were planted in the demo farm. A total of 3.79 lacsas or 9,475 whole stalks were planted. It was noted that the practice of planting whole cane stalk is not a technology but a farm practice by some planters. Based on the own experience of the partner farm, this results to a better germination rate and requires less to none re-planting.
Continuous monitoring and technology transfer sessions in the farm are being done by the RAC to further enhance results in the coming months.
