Rice Tariffication Survival Strategy of a Small Town (Part 3)

In this age of borderless economy,  the small Filipino rice farmer has become the victim. The enthronement of unlimited rice importation may have dropped rice prices that benefited consumers,  but it further impoverished the artisanal rice farmer who can't improve his economies of scale due to several factors like mechanization,  access to cheap inputs,  government support,  etc.

Strategies for the survival of the farmers should immediately be put in place.  For the small town of Bingawan,  safety nets had been initiated for  two decades now.

The late former Mayor Zafiro Palabrica, an agriculturist and farmer always advocated farm diversification.  In the late 1980s up to the mid1990s he pushed for a diversified farm system throughout the small town.  He advocated mulberry trees for silk and as fodder for goats and later deer. He also lined the roads of Bingawan with pili trees and pushed other farmers to plant all kinds of fruits and banana both for food and for sale. Vegetables became a common sight throughout the municipality because of his encouragement to improve malnutrition and as added income for farmers who often suffer from low prices during the peak of harvest season.

Now Bingawan under the leadership of his sons is a diversified economy based on farming. Farm products come out from the different baranggays year round.  Bingawan farmers compete in volume and quality with their counterparts in the third district of Iloilo. 

Lately,  many public markets sell live chickens and ducks which vendors say come from Bingawan. This shows that diversification has become an institution in the town.

More is coming in the future, says Board Member Matt Palabrica.  He and his brother Mayor Mark is encouraging is further productivity in the SFRs so that the farms within it's coverage are made productive year round. Additionally,  they want to encourage tourism in many forms. Tourism is the biggest economic activity worldwide today. The municipality plans to join this worldwide economic phenomenon as another income stream for its residents.
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THE TOWN OF A HUNDRED (MINI) LAKES

Bingawan is now known as the town of a hundred lakes, albeit,  small.  Through the efforts of its mayors,  the late Zafiro Palabrica and later his son Matt,  the town was recipient to government's Small Farm Reservoir project of the Department of Agriculture. The project builds farm reservoirs usually in the higher parts of the farm.  Mayor Zafiro embraced the project because of the terrain of the municipality where it was impossible to build an irrigation system to benefit the most number of farmers.  His son Mayor Matt appreciated his father's initial effort and sought to ask for more units from the Department of Agriculture so to date,  the town has 100 SFRs spread all over. The municipality is now known as the recipient of the most number of SFRs nationwide.

With SFRs, each isolated group of farms can be served by impounded water located higher than the farms. Water flows down by gravity.
The SFRs serves as rain water harvesters where runoff from the hills are channelled to the dammed area and stored. These are also seeded with tilapia, sea bass
 (acclimatized to fresh water) and other food  species.  Inevitably,  indigenous species like hito,  snake head (Dalag) also populate. Even the naturalized Gambezi or mosquito fish are seen in many of the ponds,  a healthy sign of a balanced aqua ecosystem.

The SFRs have improved the productivity of the farm clusters.  Rice growing season  is extended and with sufficient water, higher yields were achieved. The remaining water after the rice season was used to grow vegetables.  Using integrated farming,  the large dikes  were also utilized because of readily available water.  All these improved productivity was supervised by the municipality's agriculture office.

The end result of the municipality's intervention through the installation of SFRs is increased productivity per farmer and his family. Not only that the farmers had better rice yields,  they also have diverse sources of income,  from rice to vegetables  to fish to poultry and small scale pig raising. Improved nutrition also came in because vegetables and fish are available without added cost to the families.

Mayor Matt has been replaced by his younger brother and he is now Provincial Board Member. Mayor Mark is now pursuing the success left by his brother and his father by further increasing the productivity of the SFRs. He is now mulling new projects related to SFRs as well as those taking off from them. With the interest of the people in SFRs, he foresees that they can draw in both local and foreign tourists.  This means more effort to produce more so that there is surplus for sale to outsiders. There is also the potential for leisure and recreation,
which is now a huge industry world wide.

All these productivity started with just a project to store water for the dry season  which is often harsh and unforgiving to small farmers in the town of Bingawan,  now known as the Town of a Hundred (mini) Lakes.

Rice tariffication? How a small Iloilo town copes with this crisis (2)


Part 2: Agro-forestation as an upstream link in overall increased productivity

At the height of the craze to reforest the bald areas of the province during the first incumbency in the 1990s of former Governor Arthur Defensor Sr., then Mayor Zafiro Palabrica, the father of the now Mayor Mark and Provincial Board Member Matt, worked to plant and establish his own brand of reforestation. He promoted various types of trees like mulberry,  pili nut, food trees like jack fruit,  and,  leguminous trees like madre de cacao and the fast growing ipil-ipil. Mulberry,  madre de cacao and ipil-ipil also serve as forage for animals including wild deer that is sometimes sighted among the grasslands of the town.

The increased green cover in the whole municipality served many purposes: improved the micro climate,  increased soil fertility,  gave added income and food for the communities. Selective pruning also provided firewood for the communities which otherwise could have ravaged existing sparse brush and low lying residual trees. Leguminous trees are fast growing and when cut back or pruned for firewood grow fast to restore their foliage.  The leaves shed off when harvesting the branches decompose and become rich organic matter used to improve soil fertility.  Thus,  the agro-forestation strategy of the late mayor Zafiro became the ground work that his sons also continued and further promoted. 

The tree forests that Mayor Zafiro and later,  Mayor Matt, became the upstream link that restored the agricultural productivity of the municipality. From the seasonal farm cropping system such as rice,  corn and sugarcane that rendered most of the farmers impoverished and their families hungry during lean times (July to early September), farm production became year round because during the lean season that coincided with the rainy months,  non traditional crops like vegetables,  fruits and root crops  are produced. Thus,  the reliance on rice as a major crop has diminished yet farm productivity was even increased.

These types of leaders,  father and sons, who themselves are farmers,  led  their constituents to think differently and thus consciously devise actions not only to survive but also grow despite pressures and stresses in the environment, be it natural or political or economic.  (to be continued)

Rice Tariff Crisis? This small town is coping

Rice tariffication? How a small Iloilo town copes with this crisis (1)

With palay prices plummeting to P7.00 per kilo which is 54% of the computed production cost,  the farmers are suffering, worse than ever before.  For every kilo they sell,  they lose P5.85 and so,  not only do they lose their capital for the next crop,  they don't have the rice and money to feed their families.

That while we cannot avoid importation as a result of our joining the world trade organization,  we have slept on our preparations for the eventual entry of imports.  Our wise men were not only unwise,   many of them probably bribed by the traders who now corner the bulk of importation.

Importation is now here and a sad reality.  We cannot just sit down and cry.  We have to act to stave off total disaster,  beginning with the death of rice farming. And this small 6th class Iloilo town, named Bingawan is showing the way to coping and rising above the crisis called rice tariffication law.

Investing in SFRs.

While other towns were busy with highly visible projects,  Bingawan led by its former mayor, the late Zafiro Palabrica and continued by his successor,  his sons,  Matt and now Mark, availed of as many small farm reservoirs (SFR) project of the Department of Agriculture and the Iloilo Provincial Government.  The SFRs are the upstream link of the farming chain in areas and countries where massive and high financed irrigation systems are impractical.  SFRs provide the vital component of farming: water because without water,  there is practically no farming that can be undertaken.  To date,  there are 100 units of SFRs throughout the small town. Water in the SFRs are used to irrigate the rice and high value vegetables grown by the farmers.  Fish like tilapia, hito and bulgan were seeded into the ponds, providing needed protein at a low price to the families in the communities around the SFRs. These component was launched years ago with the support of SEAFDEC and the Iloilo Provincial Government. (to be continued)