Cordillera: From Rice to Fish Terraces

The Cordillera is made famous by its legendary rice terraces. Only few Filipinos know however that this vast mountain region’s little-known secret is its fish terraces.

BY LYN V. RAMO
Northern Dispatch
Posted by Bulatlat

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet - “My earnings may not be enough but at least my children eat fish when they want it,” said William Lapaan, a cooperator of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in a Kapihan (coffee talk) sa Benguet here last week. 

Lapaan said he does not ask his children for transport fare now that he is engaged in fish culture along Kennon Road in Tuba town. 

Lapaan began operating his fish terraces in 1999 but his 75 sq. m. - ponds were washed out due to a typhoon.  In 2002, he began developing 11 ponds for tilapia (jacket fish) and one breeding pond for carp.

“Nilagyan ko ng 232 piraso ang unang pond (I put 232 fingerlings into the first pond) from which I harvested more than 25 kilos,” Lapaan relates.  His second pond had 210 fingerlings and yielded 37 kilos. This encouraged him to tend the fish terraces until today.  His fingerlings originally came from a fish market in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija. 

Lapaan admits, however, that his income from the fishponds is drawn from the high price he sets for his harvest in order to break even - and not on the yield of the ponds. 

“Mahal ang benta ko kundi malulugi ako,” (I sell at a very high price otherwise I will not earn) Lapaan explains.  He sells his tilapia for P100 a kilo among his neighbors and tourists who travel on the treacherous Kennon Road. The average price of tilapia from Ambuklao in Bokod, Benguet is only P85-P90 a kilo.

Fish terraces benefit rice fields                         

Another cooperator, Rosalina Luz Labotan, said she was lucky to be a beneficiary of BFAR’s fishery program.  She had invested on fish terraces, converting some of her rice paddies and vegetable garden into fish ponds after receiving a P100,000 financial assistance from BFAR. 

Her farm in Taloy, Tuba is fed with irrigation water – a must for the fish terraces technology popularized by the BFAR-Cordillera.  Rebecca Dang-awan, BFAR regional director, explains that water should continuously flow into the fish ponds for fish production. 

Water from the fishponds, Dang-awan also says, may be used for rice fields and vegetable gardens found below the fish terraces. The organic materials from feeds that fish cannot consume as well as from their excreta fertilize the rice paddies.

Robert Solano, another fish farmer from Nangalisan, Tuba confirms that his farmer neighbors had been too glad to see the high rice yields after he had built his fish terraces.  Fertilizers used to be unpopular among the farmers until they noticed his higher palay yields since he started tending his tilapia terraces in 1998.

Giant prawns

Aside from tilapia, Solano raises ulang (giant prawn), carp and eel. Raising ulang, he says, is very promising, too: In just five months, 22 pieces a kilo can be harvested.

Solano’s fish terraces have also inspired other farmers in Nangalisan.  Illegal fishing methods such as the use of sodium cyanide and electrocution have been slowly scrapped, he says.

The Cordillera is the only land-locked region in the Philippines.  Although inland water bodies are too small for fish production, explains Dang-awan, good technology may improve the mountain range’s fish production. 

Rice terraces have also been introduced in Ifugao. Cage culture in the Ambuklao dam in Bokod also provides livelihood to Cordillera fish farmers.  NORDIS   / Posted by Bulatlat

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