The latest record from government agency shows that there is an estimate of 6.8hectares of forestlands with a net loss of 400,000 hectares every year.Therefore, to maintain sustainable food production while providing housing and industrial uses to lands, House Bill 4750 or the “Urban Agriculture Act of 2011”, and House Bill No. 720 known as the “Urban Agriculture Act of 2013”, mandate the Department of Agriculture and Department of Science and Technology, to promote the use of urban agriculture and vertical farming. These two laws aim to ensurefood security and rejuvenate the ecosystem functions. The law further mandates that abandoned government lots and buildings owned by the national or local governments or available land resources of state universities and colleges shall be considered for growing crops, raising lives tocks purposely to sustain the demand for food production using vertical farming and urban gardening.
Furthermore,the methods would be included in the academic curricula in secondary and tertiary levels of education both in the private and public schools . The Philippines is an agricultural country with a land area of 30 million hectares.47 per cent of which is agricultural land. Of the total area used for food crops,Two Hundred Seventy Thousand hectares are used to grow vegetables and root crops. Among them is Bulb onion . It is a favorite culinary in gredient in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia. There are about 12,000 hectares of farm lands planted with onion in Nueva Ecija and Ilocos region. The province of Nueva Ecija is the leading producer of onion accounting for 99 percent of the region’s onion production. The weather condition in the province experiences two seasons a year. The dry season during the months of November to April while the wet season occurs during the rest of the months of the year.Among the municipalities in Nueva Ecija, Bongabon is known as the onion capital of the Philippines because of the volume it produced.In this study,shallot variety of onion is used because it can be grown almost throughout the year.
At present, onion production in Nueva Ecija is threatened by importation,smuggling, and the emergence of pests bringing havoc to potential earnings of onion farmers. There are about 3000 hectares of onion plants affected by “armyworms”resulting in the dramatic decline in the production of this crop in theregion. There are three reasons cited for the decrease in onion production in Nueva Ecija: 1) The prolonged rainy season; 2) Farmers losing their marketsh are because of the coming in of imported onion; 3) Emergence of insects causing the drop in harvest.At this juncture, the literature shows that development of the onion industry in the Philippines is facing a challenge. The declining production of the industry demands that new model and a new system of farming needs to be reconsidered.Despite the present state of the industry, there is no sufficient number of researchers applying new technology and method of making onion production viable.A necessary means to maintain its mark as the onion capital of Southeast Asia. Therefore, the present study aims at using the technology of vertical farming and hydroponics as a viable system of producing onion. Investigate on the possibility of adopting vertical farming technology which might serve as a potential solution to the problems facing onion production in Nueva Ecija.
In view of the above discussion, the study posed the following statements of the problem: 1) How may the need for a sustainable system of production of onion be described in terms of viability; 2) What is vertical farming using hydroponics;3) How may vertical farming using hydroponic system be described in terms of, production cost; usability for onion production; manageability of farm activities and acceptability to farmers and onion growers? 4) How may the vertical farming using hydroponics be described in Nueva Ecija; 5) How may the findings of the study contribute to agricultural productivity in the onion industry in Nueva Ecija? Vertical farming or high-rise farming is a proposed indoor, urban farming technology involving large-scale agricultural production in multi-story buildings. While, hydroponics and aeroponics methods are tools to produce crops insoil-less nutrient solutions.Vertical Farming promises to eliminate external natural processes since crops will be grown under carefully selected and well-monitored conditions, ensuring an optimal growth rate for each species of plant and animal year-round . Iteliminates the need for fossil fuels to run machinery during the different stages of farming .It is estimated that one acre of vertical farming is equivalent to ten to twenty soil based farmlands .Vertical Farming has the following advantages compared to traditional farming practices: 1) Year-round crop production as it requires no soil rejuvenation and soil mineral recovery ordinarily observed in land-based farming. 2) Significantly reduces farm inputs and the use of fossil fuels causing damage to the environment.Land-based agriculture requires land plowing using farm implements burning gasoline and other petroleum products. 3) The technology can be put up anywhere; 4) it minimizes weather and crop failures as it is under a controlled environment the farmer himself sets; 5) it helps in restoring the farmland to the ecosystem. Hydroponics is one of the many methods of soilless agriculture through which plants are grown in mineral nutrient water .