While most of Filipino farmers grapple with the increasing cost of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, farmers in Mayoyao, a town in Ifugao, favor organic rice farming.

BY LYN RAMO
REGIONS
Northern Dispatch
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VIII, No. 22, July 6-12, 2008

BAGUIO CITY (246 kms from Manila) – Organic rice, anyone?

Mayoyao, a town in Ifugao, is a Cordillera town that proves the viability of organic agriculture, especially for indigenous rice.

Municipal agriculturist Joe Choy-awon said that Mayoyao has maintained most of its rice farms using no chemical fertilizers. He was among the participants in the three-day orientation on the fertilizer subsidy partnership program of the Department of Agriculture (DA).

Choy-awon said that Mayoyao farmers use available technology to produce organic fertilizers that sustain their rice fields from planting to harvest time.

Indigenous knowledge at work

“The secret lies in the land preparation when farmers would just dump all kinds of weeds taken from the rice terraces,” said Choy-awon. He said the land preparation is done two months before transplanting the seedlings from the seedbed. This, he explained, gives the weeds and rice hull time to rot in the rice paddies. Rice hull from the previous harvest makes up the bulk of local materials used to enrich the soil.

Farmers also put a liquid organic fertilizer from banana stalks and molasses fermented for at least seven days.

Land preparation is done manually with the indigenous Mayoyao farmers “plowing” with their bare hands and pressing down the weeds with their feet, until the green manure is embedded in the rice paddies, Choy-awon said.

After the rice seedlings are all transplanted, farmers usually clean the stone walls holding the terraces in place and all the weeds get into the paddy.

In addition, sunflower, or the marapait which grows abundantly in most Cordillera provinces, is used to enhance soil fertility in the seedbed, according to Choy-awon. “Simply cut leaves and the young twigs and leave these on the seedbed 10 to 15 days before adding the palay to germinate.”

“The yield remains at the maximum levels,” said Choy-awon, adding that Mayoyao continues to produce some three to four metric tons per hectare for every harvest season.

He said, however, that only two of Mayoyao’s 27 barangays are using organic fertilizers. “In most areas, the soil fertility has dwindled.”

Indigenous Mayoyao rice

Mayoyao still produces traditional rice varieties, the most common ones being red rice phajlar and phu-an; and white rice chumajaw and jampon, all planted in November and June.

Rain-fed varieties include both red and white varieties of linawa which are planted in July and harvested in December.

Indigenous glutinous rice varieties are also existent in Mayoyao. The red variety is called chukitan, while the red is simply diket.

“All these are grown with organic fertilizers,” according to Choy-awon.

Barely affordable rice

Choy-awon is among local officials who opposed the procurement of inorganic fertilizers from the internal revenue allotment (IRA) differentials for 2001 and 2004 purportedly to enhance rice productivity and encourage farmers to produce more rice.

He suggested that 50 percent of the town’s IRA differentials be utilized to subsidize the National Food Administration (NFA) or buy a shredder instead of commercial fertilizers. Choy-awon said that the government could help the farmers directly by subsidizing the NFA so that cheaper rice could be distributed to the poor people.

Choy-awon said an ordinary Cordillera farmer could barely afford to buy fertilizers. At P1,700 to P1,900 ($37.40 to $41,80, based on an exchange rate of P45.45 per US dollar) per sack of the common fertilizer urea, the farmer would rather buy the cheaper government-subsidized rice from the NFA, he said.

He also floated the idea that the IRA share be used to subsidize rice procurement, instead of using it to buy commercial fertilizers. “I still do not know the effect of inorganic fertilizers on the indigenous rice varieties,” Choy-awon said, adding that the land treated with the chemical inputs usually lose their fertility.

Hybrid rice varieties depend on inorganic fertilizers as a requirement to yield more, according to the DA personnel in the forum.

Fertilizer subsidy

The DA partnership with local government units (LGUs) on fertilizer subsidy program proposes that LGUs provide subsidy for four sacks of fertilizers and that the DA shoulder the subsidy for another two sacks per hectare of rice land this cropping season. With only P250-subsidy ($5.50) for each sack, the farmer will shoulder around P1,500 ($33.00) per sack for the first six sacks he would use for one hectare.

LGUs are enjoined to share at least 20 percent of their IRA differentials to this project envisioned to meet the target rice yield of 17 million metric tons before the year ends.

DA asked LGUs down to the baranggay (village) level to list down farmers willing to undergo the fertilizer program.

In Mayoyao, some 710 hectares, or more than half of the town’s 1,296-hectare rice farms, have been identified for the program.

Around P37.8 million ($831,683.17) has been allocated for fertilizer subsidy in the Cordillera, according to rice program coordinator Virgie Tapat. Northern Dispatch / Posted by (Bulatlat.com)