Title:
Phone Call About Fertilizer Could Be a Big Help to
Philippine Rice Farmers
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Advice on how much fertilizer to use will soon be
just a phone call away for rice farmers in the
Philippines. The Philippine Department of
Agriculture and the International Rice Research
Institute plan to launch a free service in
September. Farmers will call a number and a recorded
voice will ask them simple questions in Tagalog or
other languages including English. For example, to
get fertilizer guidelines for the wet season, they
press one. For the dry season, they press two.
Farmers will be asked about the size of their field
and how many bags of rice it produced last year.
What about natural sources of fertilizer? Does the
farmer return rice straw to the field? Is the field
near a lake or river that floods, or in a low area
collecting soil and other material from nearby
hills?About ten minutes later the farmer will get a
text message. The message will advise what kind of
fertilizer to use and how much. The grower will also
get suggestions about when to plant and harvest the
rice. Roland Buresh at the International Rice
Research Institute helped developed the system. Mr.
Buresh says fertilizer represents about one-fifth of
the cost of inputs for rice production. He says the
service could help farmers in the Philippines
increase their yields and their profits. Danielle
Nierenberg at the Worldwatch Institute, an
environmental research group, says the system could
also help reduce pollution.She said in the
Philippines and all over Asia, fertilizer has been
overused and misused because no one explains to
farmers how much they need or how to use it.The
technology could also be copied for crops in other
places. Danielle Nierenberg has been traveling
across sub-Saharan Africa. She says the cost of a
cell phone there is low enough that most farmers
have their own or borrow someone else's. In Zambia,
for example, farmers without bank accounts can use
their phones to buy seeds and fertilizers. They can
also get information on how much their crop is
selling for in city markets. She said they can
decide whether they want to travel from their
village to the city, because sometimes farmers get
there and prices are too low.And that's the VOA
Special English Agriculture Report. You can post
comments on our website, voaspecialenglish.com. You
can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA
Learning English.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
