Maintenance of cultural practice in the vegetable industry

CULTURAL practice in agronomy or the science of raising crops can be defined as any activity relating to the traditional practice of raising crops from sowing, maintenance and harvesting inherited by the farmers from their ancestors since time immemorial and which are not covered by commercial practices.

It starts from the selection of seeds, germination, seedling production, preparation of the land, application of fertilizers, pest management until harvesting. Commercial vegetable farming emphasizes on the heavy use of pesticides to mitigate the impact of pest to the yield without considering the ill effect to the health of the consumers.

Usually farmers depart from the recommendation of national agencies tasked to monitor agricultural practices. They also deviate from the amount to be used as recommended in the label of the products. Cultural practices such natural predation, intercropping, divergent cropping, crop rotation, asexual reproductions are declining.

In a study conducted by Bandong et al. (2011) entitled “Cultural Practices Mitigate Irrigated Rice Insect Pest Losses in the Philippines” it showed that some farmers are manipulating planting dates, sowing rates or the number of seeds to be planted in a particular area, amount of fertilizers to be deposited in the land and early or late planting of seedlings depending on the tolerance of the seedling to pest.

The cultural practice is being used purposely to increase agricultural yield and not to mitigate the increase of pest. In the same study it showed that increasing the amount of nitrogenous fertilizers at the same time increasing also the number of seedlings per unit area and early planting of seedling in the rice field has significantly increased the production of rice yields. There is a probability that if these cultural practice of rice farmers if implemented by vegetable farmers in the high lands, has a positive effect of increasing vegetable yields also. To save the environment, vegetable farmers may increase yield at the same time reducing the use of commercial pesticides by: increasing the amount of fertilizers, plant early seedlings which will grow instantly because of the fertilizer in a denser area and coupled with existing practice such as intercropping and crop rotation as natural deterrence to pests.