The government should step up programs that promote ecologically-sound food production practices to help mitigate the impacts of global warming and climate change, lawyer Efren Moncupa, lead convenor of Go Organic! Philippines, said.

According to Moncupa, the threats of global warming and climate change, which cause temperature rise to unprecedented levels, are real and the Philippines will be among the first to feel its adverse effect, particularly to agriculture.

Moncupa, a former agrarian reform undersecretary, expressed alarm over predictions that the country's rice production will drop by 50 to 70 percent by 2020.

"This will definitely impact on the Filipinos, particularly the poor," Moncupa said.

Among the vulnerable sectors, Moncupa said, rice farmers who have long been complaining of extreme hunger despite the fact that they are the ones producing the staple food for the Filipinos, will be hardest hit.

Moncupa was reacting to the report entitled "What Happened to Seasons" released by the international advocacy group Oxfam, which predicted that yield in rice-producing countries like the Philippines will drop by 10 percent for every one-degree Celsius rise in temperature.

The report said aside from rice, corn production will also suffer. Corn is an alternative to rice in poor provinces, particularly in the Visayas and Mindanao region.

The Exfam report was released in time for the Group of Eight wealthiest countries in the world or G-8 meeting in Italy this month.

"The government should step up programs that will not only help increase production, but fight global warming and climate change," Roland Cabigas, managing director of La Liga Policy Institute (LLPI) and a convenor of Go Organic! Philippines, said.

Go Organic! Philippines, a consortium of non-government organizations led by the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) and LLPI is aggressively promoting organic farming in the Philippines.

The group was behind the successful implementation of the Organic FIELDS Support Program Phase 1 (OFSP1), a project of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Bureau of Soils and Water Management (BSWM).

The project, launched by Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap in November last year officially ended in April 2009. Phase 2 of the project is currently in the pipeline.

Organic farming do not only benefits farmers in terms of increased income, but promotes better health and environmental sustainability as it veers away from excessive use of often harmful chemical fertilizers long been blamed for polluting the soil, water and air.

Cabigas said the DA is on the right track with Yap's policy to promote the shift from conventional to organic farming but said the country's food czar should act with dispatch to address food security and climate change.

Yap earlier affirmed his commitment to cover 400,000 hectares of land under OFSP2 by conducting more training and putting up organic fertilizer production sites in 200 congressional districts by 2010.

In a taped interview featuring him in the Go Organic! television program aired on NBN Channel 4, Yap said the DA will establish a total of 2,600 organic production sites in different parts of the country and will continue to provide training to farmers on organic fertilizer production to empower farmers to produce their own organic fertilizer from various materials such as animal manure, carbonized rice hull and rice stalk using various organic farming systems and technologies.