Are Southeast Asia’s organic farmers more resilient to fertiliser price spikes?

Malaysian organic rice farmer Sakiinah Mahamad Hakimi is among them. Her family’s one-acre integrated farm in the northern state of Perlis relies on a circular model that uses compost and animal manure for fertiliser, eschewing chemical inputs.

“The way nature works is that you have to create an ecosystem that doesn’t use pesticides and chemical fertilisers, so that microorganisms within the ecosystem can thrive,” she told Eco-Business. 

Sakiinah is also the community engagement officer at Ecopro Training Services, which offers education on organic farming methods. Led by her father, environmental technology professor Dr Mahamad Hakimi Ibrahim, Ecopro has collaborated with a community-based charity and other organic farmers in Kampung Ewa, Langkawi to grow over 1.3 tonnes of organic rice a year on about five acres.

But while food security is less of a concern for families like Sakiinah’s and those with access to community farms, the reality is different for urban communities, especially as the prices of petrol and diesel for transportation have surged across the region.

“The (increase in) gas prices cannot be avoided, but I am more concerned about the access to food for (other) people,” she said, referring to urban communities.

Relying on chemicals

Although interest in organic farming across Southeast Asia has risen over the years, they still make up a miniscule proportion of the region’s agricultural output. 

Organic farming initiatives make up less than 0.5 per cent of agricultural land in Southeast Asia, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), cited by researchers at the S. Rajaratnam School International Studies (RSIS), Jose Ma. Luis Montesclaros, Kayven Tan and Mely Caballero-Anthony.

“Laos, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam are some of the countries with above-average organic fertiliser use, in 1.1 per cent to 2.2 per cent of agricultural land,” the RSIS researchers told Eco-Business.

Government policies to encourage food security and boost domestic yields have encouraged the use of chemical fertilisers, said Raul Q. Montemayor, national manager of the Philippines’ Federation of Free Farmers Cooperatives. In the Philippines, over 90 per cent of fertiliser used is inorganic and almost all of it imported, he said.

“For a long time, farmers could not secure subsidised credit from government programs if they did not commit to use inorganic inputs and prescribed technologies. So, the use of inorganic inputs has become a standard and accepted practice for most farmers,” Montemayor told Eco-Business.

An aerial view of Ecopro Training Centre in Perlis, Malaysia. Image: Ecopro Training Centre - Kebun Abi/Facebook

This dependence on imported fertilisers has been a sore point for the region’s farmers as fertiliser prices have surged since late February, when the United States and Israel’s attacks on Iran triggered a regional conflict. 

Iran’s ongoing limit on which ships can pass through the Strait of Hormuz has prevented shipments of urea and ammonia to regions like Southeast Asia, which imports more than 11 per cent of its urea from the Middle East. Urea is the world’s most common nitrogen fertiliser and is used in Southeast Asia to boost the production of staple crops including wheat, rice, maize and corn.

RSIS’ researchers highlighted how even though some countries in Southeast Asia produce fertilisers, it is an energy-intensive process that still relies on imported gas.

Years to restore soil health

Although organic farmers are less exposed to the fertiliser price shock, experts say that the costs associated with such agricultural methods are prohibitive.

“It takes about 20-30 bags of compost to replace one sack of urea, and the labor cost to apply and spread the compost is a disincentive for many farmers, especially those planting rice, corn and other crops on large tracts of land,” said Montemayor.

He added that there are other challenges with expanding the use of organic fertiliser, including a lack of quality standards and limited feedstock, including biodegradable waste materials that can be converted into compost.

But possibly the most prohibitive factor for conventional farmers looking to go organic is time. Sakiinah said that her family took three years to restore the soil health on their one-acre farm, and that it takes at least three months to produce compost using materials such as cut grass and wild plants.

Montemayor shared that a similar number of years is needed for Filipino farmers to switch to organic farming methods, although there are bio-nutrients which could be able to speed up the process or induce good yields during the transition.

The time lag may make the switch to organic fertilisers unfeasible for farmers who depend on high yields for income, said the RSIS researchers. Furthermore, the application of organic fertilisers require specialised knowledge and training, which may not be readily accessible to farmers in different regions.

Food security from farms to families

This has not stopped a growing number of farmers, environmental advocates and policymakers in the region from trying to promote organic methods. 1000 Kebun, an agricultural collective based in Bandung, Indonesia, has over 800 members including farmers, activists and government representatives advocating for the use of compost and liquid organic fertilisers.

“We do not use chemical fertilisers at all,” 1000 Kebun co-founder Raden Galih Raditya told Eco-Business.

Although the use of chemical fertilisers, which have higher concentrations of nitrogen and other nutrients, can boost yields beyond organic inputs, they do not have the added benefit of boosting long-term soil health, he said.

“What is actually important in compost is not the concentration of nutrients but the presence of microorganisms such as amoebas, protozoa, even worms…this is what helps to draw [out] minerals from the soil,” Galih explained. “So to say that organic fertilisers are less productive is not true.”

1000 Kebun has also advocated for food security at the local level, connecting farmers directly to consumers in a model where farmers and families collaborate on deciding the variety, quantity and prices of produce. 

“The farmers only plant what is needed by the community, which informs the farmers what kinds of vegetables they want. Then they agree on how much to plant and when they can receive [the harvest,” said Galih.

This fair trade model protects the rights of the farmers, ensuring they get a fair price and guaranteed market for the products, while also benefiting the local community through more affordable, organic produce, he said.

Energy still matters

Still, Southeast Asia’s farmers are still feeling the pinch of rising costs due to higher fuel and packaging costs.

Soaring energy prices in the Philippines, which have triggered a national emergency, are also affecting the vehicles that farmers use to transport their produce to markets, said Montemayor. 

Gas-fueled pumps, which can use up to 150 litres of fuel to irrigate a hectare of rice fields for four-months, are also reportedly used by a third of the country’s farmers, he added.

“High fuel prices will inevitably impact the overall cost of living in the rural areas, affecting not only farming costs but also prices of food, medicine, and various services that farming households need,” he said.

Ecopro Training Centre in Perlis uses organic farming practices to grow paddy for rice. Image: International People’s Agroecology Movements (IPAM)

To Montemayor, fertiliser and fuel subsidies are the most immediate solution to this challenge, although there will be challenges delivering this to the large numbers of farmers, particularly in rural and remote areas.

In Indonesia, the government has maintained the prices of subsidised fuel and its budget for subsidised fertilisers. But Galih fears that these subsidies can only continue to be supported by higher taxes on working Indonesians, including farmers.

“With subsidised fertiliser availability increasingly constrained, farmers stand at crossroads: whether to double down on conventional inputs that are getting more expensive by the day, invest in building a more regenerative farming practice, or decide to skip planting altogether,” said Elyssa Kaur Ludher, visiting fellow with the Climate Change for Southeast Asia Programme at the ISEAS — Yusof Ishak Institute.

Adjusting agricultural policies

Governments in Southeast Asia can encourage small-scale, experimental approaches of integrating organic fertilisers with existing chemical fertilisers, said the RSIS researchers. 

“Organic fertilisers are indeed one option, but the shift towards organic should be done gradually, as can be observed in Sri Lanka’s experience previously where it failed to conduct effective consultation with stakeholders prior to implementation, leading to a 30 per cent reduction in yields among national food producers,” they said.

It would also help if governments could encourage or incentivise farmers to align with the Asean Good Agricultural Practices to improve the efficiency of fertiliser use, the researchers said.

At the same time, countries need to explore deeper governance reforms to ensure there are no leakages in fertiliser subsidies, they added.

But while Malaysia’s organic farmers like Sakiinah remain less affected by changes to fertiliser prices and policies, there are other policy changes they fear could hurt food security — in particular, a new seed law.

Despite protests from farmers, the government is still attempting to pass amendments to the country’s Protection of New Plant Varieties Act, to align with the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).

“If Malaysia were to adopt UPOV, it will affect organic and conventional farmers — if seeds are patented, small farmers would not be able to survive,” she said.