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Indigenous rice farming in Kalinga

BAGUIO CITY (Aug. 2) — The people of Ngibat, in the municipality of Tinglayan, Kalinga continuously practice indigenous rice farming as their main source of livelihood. The rice produced are supplemented by agricultural products from the “uma” or swidden farms. Their products from the “uma” include “camote” and “kamoteng kahoy”; legumes like black and white beans; “monggo” and corn; and other vegetables. These are planted in the “uma” when the people are usually free from the ricefield jobs like land preparation, sowing, replanting, weeding, harvesting, and storing their harvests in the rice granary.

Ngibat village

Ngibat is a village situated in the southernmost tip of Tinglayan town in Kalinga. It is inhabited by the Butbut tribe, one of the ethnolinguistic groups in the Cordillera Region. It was known as Masinta in the earlier period. From Bontoc proper, it takes two-and-half hours ride by jeep along the Bontoc - Kalinga National Road to Barangay Maswa, which is the nearest entry point to the village. It is accessible by foot from Maswa roadside, along trails passing through vast cogon land, the Micro-hydro Project of the Montañosa Research and Development Center (MRDC), and several rice fields. Ngibat is accessed from Tinglayan through Tulgao East which is partly concreted by the municipal government of Tinglayan.

According to Mrs. Mary Amongan, the barangay midwife, the total population of the village is 270 based on their 2004 survey. It has 34 households where the average number of children per family is seven to eight.

Indigenous rice prod’n

Rice is the staple food in Ngibat village. It is grown twice a year: from August to February and from March to July. The village folk utilize several indigenous rice varieties which include the red rice variety they call “komele” and white rice varieties known as “putsawan”, tubowan” “tuhuwan” and “unoy”.

Our interviews with the villagers revealed that they do not plant high yielding varieties (HYV), which they claim had eradicated the indigenous rice varieties in the rice producing areas like in lower Kalinga.

Ngibat villagers plant rice in the low lying fields near the Chico River as these are assured of water supply and less birds attack their rice plants here.

Problems in rice prod’n

Ngibat villagers, majority farmers, encounter several problems in their rice farming. They narrated that the Taiwan snails or “bisukol” attack their fields; so do the rice birds or “tilin” that attack and lessen their produce.

They do not use commercial fertilizers and pesticides. The villagers instead use indigenous ways of pest management in addressing these problems. In the case of the “bisukol,” they put just enough water in the rice field so that the snail would not eat the young rice plants.

With the rice birds, villagers claim they use scarecrows to drive these birds away. Children use another method also considered effective by villagers. They collect the sap of the local “alumit” tree and apply it to the tip of the bamboo stick. They use bamboo to create a sound and attract the rice birds into the tip of the sticky bamboo stick, said Ngibat Barangay Captain Pedro Bumun-as. These birds are trapped into the sticky bamboo tip and easily taken by the children and cooked as viands.

(Francie Puerto is a graduate of the Easter College in Baguio City. She finished Bachelor of Science in Development Studies. She was among the students who visited Ngibat in Tinglayan last summer for a community immersion facilitated by the Sagada-based Montañosa Research and Development Center.)

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