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Cordillera farming at the edge of twilight zone

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet (Oct. 5)—The “sign on the wall” was there for all to see in 1994. But only a few heeded. The government then was favorably entertaining the idea of the General Agreement of Tariff and Trade (GATT).

Now the pinch is being felt and it will not be long before the once-lucrative Cordillera vegetable farming will be a thing of the past.

Already, the country’s membership with the World Trade Organization (WTO) has caused more than 50,000 garlic and onion farmers in the Ilocos and Central Luzon regions to be jobless. Almost an equal number of corn growers in Mindanao are clueless as to where to sell their crops and thousands of hectares of prime agricultural lands in the Southern Tagalog region are being transformed into industrial estates.

Is the Cordillera region far behind? All indications lead to that. Free trade has allowed the entry of cheap farm products, whether legally or illegally. Limited education of farmers has not prepared them for such global shift. Farm inputs are skyrocketing. Present agricultural knowhow and technology cannot cope with the threat of pests and diseases. Most importantly, the environment and genetic diversity from which agriculture depends upon were fast diminishing, some to permanent extinction.

Only a few will disagree that farming in the region is skirting decline. Others like Dr. William D. Dar, former secretary of agriculture and now head of the powerful ICRISAT (International Crops Rresearch Institute for Semi-Arid Crops) which leads agricultural research in South Asia and Africa say “ Cordillera farmers have to undergo a radical change of agricultural values, if not, they will be swept away”.

Dr. Dar knows what he is talking about. He was schooled at the Benguet State University (BSU), was once the vice president and top researcher and also headed the Highland Agricultural Research Center (now HARRDEC) which unfortunately had not made many earthshaking performances.

Having been an agriculturist for many years, I consider the agricultural problems of today the result of the absence of a national policy to address sustainable agriculture (SA) in the early ‘80s. The government started giving cognizance to SA only in 1991, but it was not a no-nonsense approach. It was implemented half-heartedly and there was no push at all to step on the gas.

If SA was pushed early in the country as in China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, the Philippines by now have fully trained farmers, safe and less-poisoned crops that can compete with products of other countries and highly organized farmers organizations that efficiently manage their own marketing systems.

The international call for governments to support SA started in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) when it concluded that “ because world agriculture is facing immense problems and challenges, there was a need for a new approach to agricultural development”.

It stressed that governments especially those in developing countries like the Philippines should “shift their focus of food production for local consumption and not for trade….”In doing so, “governments should sustain, restore and enhance resource bases which have been destroyed and diminished “.

By joining WTO, food security was sacrificed for export-promising crops. It did not materialize much. Most farmers were untrained to shift to so-called high value crops. It was like making a fisherman out of a farmer. We started buying poor quality crops even from countries like Vietnam whose scientists we used to train. Locally-produced crops rotted in the fields.

The promised million jobs remain a promise and the funds intended to cushion of WTO was not at all delivered to create appropriate safety nets as envisioned

Because the stakes are high and the lives of farm families are on the chopping block, there is a must to accelerate SA approaches especially in the Cordillera if agriculture is to flourish once more in the future.

What is needed is to translate SA principles into action by training farmers appropriate strategies and techniques that will lead to sufficient yields but will not deplete resource base upon which they depend.

When we say training, we mean technicians should be skilled, capable, experts and advocates of true tenets of farming. Sadly, this is not all true with the government’s poorly paid technicians and workers.

Technicians need to work with farmers more closely to the ground and where the frontline is—on the farms. One Asian Development Bank (ADB) study noted that in the implementation of agricultural trainings in the country, much has been spent on food, travel, supplies and resource persons instead of skills-development activities that concretely prepare farmers.

Cordillera farmers must be provided the capacity to develop and manage technology for actual creation of sustainable farming systems.

As it is, the idea of organic farming in the Cordillera is “late”. Late in the sense that even as organic farming methods exist in the region since time immemorial, the government has not given this much significance. Instead. it opted, after finally accepting that chemical farming is not a panacea for agriculture, to introduce foreign approaches.

Today, organic farming is misconstrued by many in lots of different ways.

To top it all, some politicians are exploiting the problem to gain media mileage without understanding what needs to be done. Some are fault-finding and others crying over spilt milk. The fact is that “The government has signed with the WTO. It cannot just back out because the repercussions are terrible.”

The immediate need today is for local action for global solutions. For instance, strengthening local farming communities and markets by working closely with local consumers. New market opportunities and niches need to be promoted between progressive cooperatives, NGOs, farmers groups, POs and consumers’ groups.

Opportunities like these need full support, to lessen the burden of WTO’s negative impact to Cordillera farmers # Michael A. Bengwayan

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