MANILA, Philippines ? A program to convert 400,000 hectares of traditional rice lands into organic farms will produce enough organic rice to meet domestic and international demand, anofficial of non-profit group La Liga Policy Institute said

?If a one-hectare rice farm produces 3.5 tons of organic rice, the 400,000 hectares will produce over a million metric tons. The increased supply could also help make organic rice more affordable to more people and not just the middle class and high-income market,? La Liga managing director Roland Cabigas said in an interview.

?The production will be enough to supply current demand for niche markets here and we can also export. In fact, someone from Singapore has expressed interest in direct trade. We want to encourage this,? he said.

Cabigas said the Department of Agriculture (DA) http://www.da.gov.ph/wps/portal, nongovernmental organizations and farmers had met on the timetable of conversion from 2009 to 2010.

?As per DA, the process will start after the April harvest. Farmers will be trained in organic farming around May or June in preparation for conversion,? he said.

A combination of rain-fed upland farms and irrigated lowland farms will be converted.

Those located in fourth- fifth- and sixth-class municipalities will be given priority, Cabigas said.

He said the target was to increase organic rice production to the national benchmark of 3.8 tons a hectare.

The local market for organic products is estimated to be worth about $10 million, the Philippine Development Assistance Program Inc. (PDAP) said.

PDAP said about 40 percent of current production is exported and the rest is consumed locally.

PDAP executive director Jerry Pacturan said in an earlier interview that more benefits would be realized if all 2.5 million hectares currently planted with certified seeds would go organic.

He said that by doing so, the rice farming sector could save at least P50 billion a year. The savings could then be used for food security projects.

There are only 14,000 hectares of rice farms using organic methods, although most operations have not been certified, Pacturan said.

Conventional rice farms, meanwhile, occupy 4 million hectares of land nationwide.

Pacturan said that conventional rice farming uses up to P31,000 per hectare per cropping for farming implements alone, including non-organic fertilizers.

On the other hand, organic farming requires just P17,000 a hectare and this covers organic fertilizers and pest repellents.

Labor costs are the same at about P5,000 per hectare per cropping.

?The savings add up to about P14,000 per hectare for one cropping. Even at just P10,000 per hectare, when realized from 2.5 million hectares currently planted with government-certified seeds, that adds up to P25 billion per cropping, and we average two croppings a year. That could go to farmer education, technology transfers, buying shredders, and other programs that will help us achieve food security in a sustainable way,? Pacturan said.

The PDAP was founded in 1986 as a consortium of Filipino and Canadian nongovernmental organizations developing community-based projects to help reduce poverty and inequity in the Philippines.