GARDENING 101

by ESTRELLA F. CATARATA | FARDEC

In 2004, the Central Visayas Farmers Development Center (FARDEC) conducted a study on Bohol rice farmers’ situation and production. Research was done in Ubay, the province’s top rice-producing municipality. Most of Ubay’s farmers are tenants, each tilling a hectare of land on average. The prevailing sharing scheme is “one-fourth – three-fourths”, where the landowner gets a quarter of the gross income from the harvest, and the rest goes to the tenants.

Research showed that to till a one-hectare rice farm, a farmer needed P22,625 each cropping season. Expensive chemical farm inputs (fertilizers and pesticides), labor costs, and rent for post-harvest and irrigation facilities account for most of the expense. A hectare of land usually yielded 60 40-kg sacks of palay, which traders bought at P12 a kilo. Gross income would thus add up to P28,800. Out of this amount the landlord would take P7,200, his share according to the scheme, leaving only P22,600 for the tenant. Net income for the farmer would thus amount to a negative P25 for each three-month cropping season.

Expensive inputs account for much of production cost.

The farmers of the community where FARDEC did the research were trapped in the landlord-tenant relationship, used non-organic fertilizers and pesticides heavily, and had not united themselves into a peasant organization. Unable to afford enough food, these farmers ate camote, cassava, or banana in lieu of rice. Many of them had taken jobs in the cities, commonly in construction.

This situation, where food producers have not enough to eat, is not unique to the Philippines. International development organizations such as the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation recognize that 70 percent of the world’s poor, of the billion that live on less than a dollar a day, are found in rural areas and depend on agriculture for livelihood.

Sustainable solution
FARDEC is  proposing a sustainable solution to the difficulties rice farmers face and to the country’s rice crisis. It is called GARDENING.

FARDEC believes that in order to seriously combat food insecurity, land must be placed in the hands of the tillers through a genuine land reform program. This will end exploitation by landowners. Sustainable farming, enhanced by support services, will boost rice production. Not only will organic farming lower the cost of production, it will enhance soil fertility. Also, it will allow people to eat rice that is poison-free.

In 2002, the dailies quoted the Department of Agriculture secretary saying that while the country was spending P10B to import rice, it would cost the gov ernment much less – P3 billion to P5 billion – to get rice farmers to produce the imported volume. The country is rich in natural resources,  and with the reforms in land ownership and the use of alternative farming methods, there will be no reason to continue importing rice. By not importing, the country can say goodbye to its agricultural trade deficit, which already reached $3.5 billion within five years of joining the World Trade Organization.

Rather than import,  the National Food Authority (NFA) should increase the buying price of palay and increase procurement capacity to at least 25 percent of total palay production. The government should also regulate the supply, pricing, and marketing of rice to take control away from the traders and cartels. The traders’ interest is making profit. The government, on the other hand, is responsible for ensuring that people’s food needs are met.

Victory through organization
In communities where FARDEC had helped farmers establish their organizations, such as in Trinidad and some Ubay villages, farmers are faring better. With the landlord-tenant relationship broken, the farmers need no longer share a part of their income or produce to the landowner. These communities have also began to shift to organic farming. FARDEC and village farmers’ organizations under the province-wide federation HUMABOL successfully campaigned for higher prices of procurement by traders and the NFA alike. In 2006, buying price increased to P12 per kilo from the P7.20 to P8.20 per kilo range in 2004. This was the result of mobilization and dialogs with the NFA and the area’s biggest trader. Even farmers without organizations joined the campaign.

These gains are among the many that organized farmers have collectively achieved by asserting their rights, with the assistance of non-government organizations such as FARDEC.

The farmers are key to food security. Their struggles have resulted in gains that are felt by communities on the ground. The challenge to development workers is to strengthen proven strategies to aid the farmers and continue to devise ones that would best deliver reforms leading to food security through self-sufficiency.

Read this and other articles in Ani's special issue (Ani Vol. 1 No. 2, 2008). Click here to download.