NATURAL FARMING IN THE PHILIPPINES:

TRADITIONAL FARMING SYSTEMS AND LOCAL EFFORTS TO SAVE THEM

Dion Workman

PUBLISHEDBYNAKAZORA,2011

The village of Bulpog is located at approximately 2400 metres above sea level in Ifugao province, central Luzon, the largest island of the Philippines. It is an area characterized by mountainous terrain, steep river valleys and large forests. The village is inhabited by a clan of Kalanguya tribes people, farmers and foresters. The farmers here operate a traditional system of farming, variations of which can be found throughout the mountains of northern Luzon and in other remote regions throughout Asia. It is a system of farming that was dominant in the Asia Pacific region before the introduction of mechanized/chemical agriculture and/or pastoralism. It is a system of terraquaculture (earth-water farming),1 a natural farming system that utilizes the existing features of environments (eco-structures) in developing highly productive and sustainable systems. In particular it works with the natural flows of water through the landscape, making optimal use of the water and the nutrients it carries. In the steep mountain valleys surrounding Bulpog the basic pattern of the farming system is terraced rice paddies as low down in the system as possible with vegetables grown around the edges of the paddies and managed forest (pinguo) above. The forest is recognized as the source of water and fertility that keeps the whole system productive. The terraces protect the soil, preventing erosion from surface run-off and the forests above ensure continued water and nutrient flow to the rice terraces as the water percolates through the humus of the forest floor and seeps downhill into the terraced paddies.

Figure 1: Rice paddies and managed forests, Bulpog The Bulpog clan of the Kalanguya people are true forest dwellers. Much of their food, their medicines, shelter and many items used in daily life are products of their forests. Their cash crops of coffee and betel nut are grown throughout the forest. Food grown in the forest and on its fringes includes avocado,

coconut, taro, cassava, chili, citrus, papaya, banana, pineapple, rattan, ginger, yam as well as various fungi and wild honey. The distinction between farmed and wild food is truly blurred in these forests. In a sense everything is farmed in that selective weeding of the forest is done in order to promote the growth of the most desirable species but at the same time everything grown in the forest is somewhat wild as self-seeding is the main method of propagation and everything is grown in truly complex polycultures.

Figure 2: Gerald Puguon Jr. clears vegetation around coffee saplings What is not grown in the forest, or on the forest edge around dwellings and along pathways, is produced as part of the paddy system. The farmers here grow from one to three crops of rice per paddy field per year depending on the variety (hundreds of different rice varieties are grown in Ifugao province) and how much time they want to spend in their paddies. While rice is the main staple any failure in the rice crop could be covered by the secondary staples of taro and cassava. The people here may be poor but they are certainly in no risk of starvation! The rice paddies are also biodiverse polycultural systems. With the rice is grown taro and azolla, ducks, molluscs and fish (various kinds of snails, fresh water crayfish and loaches). On the walls of the paddies legumes are grown, usually the winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus), a delicious and highly nutritious bean that is also an excellent nitrogen fixer. Other vegetables are grown around the edges of the paddies but on occasion whole plots of vegetables are planted. These more recognizable vegetable gardens are used to form new terraces. The farmers create rows running with the slope so that the act of gardening slowly moves the soil downhill, eventually creating a level terrace that can be used as a paddy.

Figure 3: Community rice harvest, Bulpog

Like traditional forest dwellers the world over the Kalanguya's way of life is exposed to many threats and the introduction of coffee to their forests was a strategic response to a major environmental threat. The planting of coffee in these forests began in earnest in the 1970s when the introduction of cattle grazing threatened to destroy the forests and the entire terraqueous system. Insightful farmers realized that in order to save the forests they needed to develop more cash crops that required forest cover and began to plant coffee widely. Initially the plan was a success with the grazing of cattle quickly abandoned but a crash in coffee prices in the 1980s and subsequent fluctuations have exposed the forest to new threats. When prices are good the coffee, a plant that naturally grows in the shade of forests, provides a good income and encourages the maintenance of forest cover in the mountains. When prices fall the less scrupulous farmers become susceptible to the suggestions and practices of outsiders more focused on exploitation than sustainability. Most recently Filipino government agricultural advisors have been encouraging the forest farmers to cut down patches of forest in order to grow coffee plants in the open a practice utilized for increased production of coffee through the faster maturation of the plant and short cycles of plantation regeneration, i.e., an industrial monocultural approach to coffee production that requires the destruction of the forest and the subsequent depletion of fertility in order to increase productivity marginally for a short time. But, as Sandor Ellix Katz points out, it does not make any kind of sense for the people (or the land) of any place to grow massive quantities of stimulants for export rather than nutritious food for local consumption. It only happens by the exercise of force and the alienation of people from the land.2 The origins of slavery and colonization are to be found in the production of stimulants chocolate, coffee and sugar for the Western world and it is in the production of these same commodities that slavery persists to this day. And while we may believe that colonizing armies are a thing of the past, in

truth, the methods of military persuasion have merely been exchanged for the economic persuasion of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, transnational corporations and Third World debt. The true beneficiaries of deforestation and open coffee plantations will not be the Kalanguya, not even in the short run, but Nestl, the main buyer of coffee in the region. Coffee production in the Philippines is one of globalized free market capitalisms all too familiar tragic tales. From the villages just thirty minutes walk from the forests where the Kalanguya grow their high quality, organic, shade grown coffee to throughout the whole of the Philippines people are consuming, in great quantities, Nescaf 3'n'1 low grade instant coffee premixed with milk powder, sugar and artificial sweeteners and ubiquitously accompanied by slick advertisements featuring film, television and pop stars. Again the Bulpog clan of the Kalanguya are formulating a response to these latest threats in order to protect their way of life and the forests of which they are a part. In 2007 the Julia Campbell Agro-forestry Memorial Park (JCAMP) was founded on the land of the Puguon family.3 The idea for the park grew out of the group Indigenous Farmers for Sustainable Agriculture, founded by Gerald Puguon Jr., with the mandate of protecting the traditional farming systems of the area and the environments of which they are an integral part. The vision of JCAMP is the formation of an expanding area of land where traditional natural farming techniques are practiced and the environment on which they depend is conserved. The park currently covers 100 hectares and numbers 100 households. In joining the park the members agree to a few basic rules; no slash and burn agriculture or clear cutting, no chemicals and no hunting. Although the rule against hunting may seem a little incongruous for people of the forest it is required to protect the civet cat (a cat like mammal native to the tropics of Africa and Asia although introduced to the Philippines) which processes coffee beans by eating the flesh of the fruit and leaving the bean behind in droppings. Civet coffee demands a very high price and is viewed by the JCAMP families as a valuable resource to be protected. The no hunting rule also serves to protect the birds of the forest and it is aimed, not so much at the families living within the park but at hunters that stray on to their land. As Gerald Puguon Jr. explains, the people of Bulpog, with their largely vegetarian diet, domestic chickens and pigs, are not dependent on hunting and it is usually done as sport and often by poachers. Families that join the park and operate within its few basic rules are able to sell their civet coffee directly to a Texas based coffee roaster and distributor, Bantai Civet Coffee.4 While the price JCAMP members receive from Bantai for their civet coffee is relatively high civet coffee, as it is wild harvested from the droppings of a wild animal, is very time intensive and can only be supplied in relatively low quantities. JCAMP members are able to supply organic, shade grown arabica and robusta coffee in much larger quantities but are finding it very difficult to break in to the fiercely competitive world of fair trade, organic coffee. Without the resources to gain certification or even to send samples overseas the Bulpog Kalanguya need to find partners to provide the minimal financing required to give them access to international markets. With the nearest internet access 2 hours journey from their village the Bulpog Kalanguya face severe disadvantages in operating on the international stage on to which they have been pushed. Given the size of the domestic coffee market in the Philippines an even better alternative might be for the coffee to be sold locally by community owned companies. Unfortunately, the omnipresence of Nescaf and their manufactured preference for sweet, milky instant coffee make this an even harder market to crack.

1 See Haikai Tane, 'Terraquaculture: Sustainable Farming Using Water,' OrganicNZ, Jan/Feb., 2009 and 'Terraquaculture Two: Farming Living Watersheds,' OrganicNZ, March/April 2009. 2 Sandor Ellix Katz, Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods. (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green, 2003) p. 25. 3 Julia Campbell was a United Sates Peace Corp. volunteer murdered in April 2007 while hiking near Bauaue, Ifugao province. 4 www.bantaicivetcoffee.com