SALCEDO COMMUNITY MARKET, 14th Anniversary: A REVIEW

Featured Vendor: HERBANA FARMS, Mr. Gil Carandang

By:CJ Lagman, S&S Network

The Saturday market in Salcedo Park was my first assignment in this prime area of Makati. "Something could be good for a column" as for my editor. I wasn’t adamant to go, just the nature of going to a market doesn’t sink in at first. I could recall the same for my 2005 VFW Post 2285, Gold Star Mothers Tribute at Piper’s Kilt in Eastchester, New York. Myself as one of the keynote speaker for an advocacy drive that later on changed the by-law of a Washington based chartered organization, The Gold Star Mothers Incorporated.

I went anyway.

“I had a bigger dream of creating an ecological village, a sustainable community that is not based on oil or on etc.but into recycling of natural resources within the system. Waste convert it to fertilizer, fertilizer into food.”

Gil Carandang

You’ll know you’re about to get a good sit-down in this metro area when someone begins their story with their choice of word such as “advocacy”. A fellow from my hometown, Manhattan. Mr. Gil Carandang, Father of Modern Philippine Organic Farming. A resource speaker who's concept of good farming is by means of proper cultivation of indigenous micro-organisms that is essential to breakdown nutrients into forms that are accessible to plants and animals, an organic approach to increase the soil’s life and diversity. These farming method that promotes harnessing beneficial micro-organisms to enrich soil composition without using chemical fertilizers can benefit local farmers grow high yield crops and can reduce their cost of up to 50%. His farming techniques were developed over years of studies in Japan, Korea, and United States.

Mr. Gil Carandang, Full Bright Scholar and Author, Grow Your Own Beneficial Indigenous Microorganisms and Bio-nutrients in Natural Farming.( published 2011).

Herbana Farms (fresh produce), the farm practice of introducing beneficial indigenous microorganisms and bionutrients to local crops with out using chemical fertilizers and pesticides promotes plant’s and soil natural development through the ecological method of Natural Agriculture. The farm is aligned for local and international organic standards.