While authorities said poor animal care killed several heads of cattle in Cebu’s upland barangays, we cannot deny the role of climate change in the deaths and damage to agriculture.
Dr. Pilar Romero, head of Cebu City’s Department of Veterinary Medicine and Fisheries pointed out that the unusual cold worsened the condition of the animals.
We must not conclude that all our farmers are incompetent at animal husbandry. Were this the case, scores of livestock would have dropped dead regularly.
AccuWeather—a website that tracks weather by the hour in key locations worldwide—forecast for Jan. 18 a fall in temperatures in Cebu City to 21 degrees Celsius—the coldest in years.
We have had weeks of overcast skies, intermittent rains and chill winds, exacerbated by the southward movement of the Arctic polar vortex and the assault of typhoon Agaton on Mindanao.
The vortex and storms in the country’s far south were rarities before the advent of global warming and climate change.
But phenomena like these are the new normal, so frontline agriculture officials are in a race against time to protect our crops and livestock.
Meteorologists expect an El Niño phenomenon when the dry season begins late February. That means a new round of droughts and heat waves will come upon us and our farms.
City Agriculturist Joel Baclayon said we should not be alarmed in view of the cold spell’s destructive trail.
But neither should we downplay the seriousness of our losses: nearly 70 heads of cattle and more than 300 hectares of crops valued at P22 million.
We should adapt more quickly to crazy weather.
Government agriculturists and veterinarians must now teach climate change adaptation to farmers, otherwise they will fall out of the business of raising and growing our food.
Our smallholders do not even have money to shelter animals.
Calamity funds would be well spent not only on buying seedlings for farmers and teaching them better animal care.
They should be taught climate adaptation techniques that are useful in times of runaway heat and cold, like inter-cropping or growing trees amid crops, and digging ponds to collect used water and runoff rain.
More than ever, we need to be a step ahead of Mother Earth, whose wrath can claim in an instant what we take time and sweat to plant and tend.
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