TACLOBAN CITY- Leyte Governor Leopoldo Dominico Petilla is calling on the farmers to design and practice farming activities that will lessen methane and other greenhouse gases emission to the atmosphere and help in climate change mitigation.
Petilla, in an interview, said that farmers should design and practice farming systems that will lessen methane emission and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
He pointed that methane gas is one of the primary greenhouse gases along with water vapor, nitrous oxide, ozone and carbon compounds which causes greenhouse effect and eventually warming the Earth resulting to climate change.
The governor said that the deadly super typhoon ‘Yolanda’ that pummeled the province and the rest of Eastern Visayas six years ago was a product of climate change.
Petilla suggested that the farmers should not burn farm wastes because in the process, carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere or let them decay in the open as the decaying matter produces and emits methane gas to the atmosphere.
These farm wastes should rather be made into compost and be made as fertilizers to lessen farm production costs, the governor said.
Petilla claimed that under his agricultural program, dubbed as “More Income in the Countryside,” farmers were being taught to practice farming systems and activities that lessen the emission of methane gas and other carbon compounds.
He said that the livestock program of his administration is designed to lessen methane gas emission in the process like the “babuyan walang amoy.”
Petilla added that the program is also teaching the farmers for composting of the farm wastes and make them organic fertilizers to lessen the methane emission to the atmosphere.
It was learned that methane gas which is flammable and being used as a fuel by several countries producing greenhouse gas.
It was further learned that the major sources of methane gas include the decomposition in natural wetlands, decay in landfills and leakage from the oil and gas industry.
But most sources of the methane gas are from human activities like in livestock production, farming systems and biomass burning.
(RESTITUTO A. CAYUBIT)
