The recent increases in the prices of oil and its by-products have led many farmers in the upland barangays of Ormoc to rethink their farming systems. Now a field of tomatoes in a plot 20 x 20 square meters big can only be more expensive to maintain, especially since most of these farmers are heavy users of chemical fertilizers and pesticides which were directly hit by the oil price hikes.
But apart from the issue of economics, there are other issues that need to be understood by the farmers themselves. Foremost among these is sustainability. Farming cannot be sustainable if it continues to depend on hybrid, non-self-pollinating varieties, inorganic fertilizers and pesticides that are derived from our disappearing fossil fuels. Any agricultural system that depends on such external sources for its continued sustenance is bound to be self-destructive. It will reach a level whereby producing food becomes impossible without the support of such fertilizers and pesticides. There will come a time when farmers will no longer be able to plant the seeds from their produce.
This is now happening in rice where hybrid varieties are being promoted to increase yield. Rice farmers in Ormoc and elsewhere in the country now have to buy expensive hybrid seeds so that they can plant rice. And since hybrid rice cannot thrive without maximum fertilizer application, the farmer must likewise buy enough bags of fertilizers. By design, hybrid rice varieties are symbiotic with massive fertilizer application.
Other crops will follow suit. Tomatoes, eggplants, sweet pepper and other greens, like cabbages, lettuce, Chinese cabbage and pechay seeds must be bought from seed suupliers, which are mostly foreign companies. Because of such dependence, they will also learn to borrow from other business sectors because they will need capital to start up their farms, this at exhorbitant interest rates.
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Fertilizer impact on the soil can only lead to its continued degradation since these fertilizers are provided with acid base that destroys soil micro-organisms and the nutrients important to soil fertility. The more farmers use such inputs, the more the soil is depleted. We can cite plenty of cases where the soil has become so acidic that the farmers have to buy powdered lime stones in order to lessen the soil’s acidity. For instance, Carigara (Leyte) farmers have been for years buying crushed lime stones from Brgy. San Juan, Ormoc City, in order to neutralize their acidic soil. In some cases, the soil had simply hardened after it had lost all traces of humus.
The constant use of chemical pesticides that is intended to wipe out all field insects ends up destroying the ecosystem and causing serious imbalances and harmful consequences. This is apart from their impact on human health. Plants and other field crops become easy prey to plant eating insects, which had in the meantime proliferated in the absence of predators that did not survive the pesticides. In some cases, pests develop an immunity to the medicine that they return in greater ferocity and number to one’s crops, oblivious of the pesticidal spraying. This is happening in Brgy. Kabentan, which is known as the salad bowl of Region 8. Large contiguous areas here have been converted to vegetable plantations, the perfect examples of market-driven mono-cropping farming systems.
Of course, the use of chemical pesticides does not augur well for the health of consumers. Toxic chemicals in pesticides usually leave traces of poison on the plants on which they are applied, and these are ingested by farmers. No wonder we hear of so many toxin-related ailments affecting internal organs of many farmers and sending them to hospitals or their deathbeds. There are several undocumented cases of damages of internal organs, the skin as well as eyesight in that barangay that have so far escaped official notice.
At the back of this farming system is the orientation that has been nurtured in the farmers’ consciousness – that they must produce for the market. This is the rationale why they are engaged in farming. Producing for family becomes secondary. Many times this is even left out in the haste to make quick profits in the marketplace.
This market-driven farming system promotes a mono-cropping scheme adopted by large plantations, a scheme that violates all the laws of environmental sciences. Indeed, agriculture today is devoid of all science but has shifted its concerns to profit and agri-business. First, plantations thrive only when the land is cleared of all weeds and grasses because these are presumed to be harmful to the crops. Sometimes, these are even burned on the ground to further rid the soil of “harmful” micro-organisms. Because our farmers have been born and raised on this kind of orientation, even their small plots of tomatoes and other vegetables follow this mono-cropping routine.
The farmers are never told that from the moment they plow the land and thoroughly clean it up for their crops, they are removing important insect host plants and habitats and that such a practice is a step towards the infertility of the soil. Plowing and thorough land preparation removes plants sources of or micro-organisms to thrive on. They are not told that the land can be replenished only if the dead plants are allowed to rot on the soil whence they came from, aided by micro organisms that function as digesters of these dead plants and that convert these into essential soil nutrients, like nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and other minerals. Indeed, the practice of burning dead plants is not scientifically sound and does not help in making the land sustainable. Yet such unsound practices are being promoted by government extension workers in the barangays along with the massive application inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.
Worse, government is offering all kinds of inducements, inviting small farmers to the global arena when it cannot even give adequate market data on the local scene. It cannot even provide the necessary information that will enable farmers to decide what crops to plant and when to harvest them. Instead they are often left to their own devices when marketing their produce. Thus, even at the local market, some commodities are in oversupply while others are scarce. In cases when there is glut, prices tumble and the poor farmer goes home to his farm with a heavy heart. On the other hand, the vegetable traders and suppliers of farm inputs gloat with glee. And all the time, government officials shrug their shoulders, dismissing the phenomenon as something over which they have no control. “Market forces,” they say.
So why produce for the market in the first place? Why induce the small farmer to go global? The reasons are pretty obvious: it’s all for the sake of agri-business, of course. The small farmers are left out of this equation.
Because of this mono-cropping scheme, nothing is left for the farmer’s family to consume at the table. A lot of farmers go hungry this way. Those who have made loans – and the majority of them do – are even worse off. They not only go hungry; they are saddled with loans with high interest rates, loans that they must pay in the next cropping season.
At no time is this more evident than on the rainy months of October to December. In the upland areas where Pagtinabangay Foundation operates, it is common to hear of farmers not eating three times a day. In the absence of any viable alternative to the mono-cropping craze, many of them have simply abandoned their plots or converted them into abaca plantations where the chances for making money are more apparent.
An alternative
Farmers must shift their orientation about farming if they want to avoid the consequences of hunger and extreme deprivation. Instead of planting for the market, they must plant for their own family’s consumption – which is actually a lot easier to do. For one, this calls for the total abandonment of the mono-cropping scheme in favor of diversified cropping. Instead of planting only tomatoes, eggplant or Chinese cabbage, they should plant more vegetables, and that should be in lesser quantities since family consumption is a lot lesser and a lot easier to determine than the demand of a market which they know nothing about. A family of five members will definitely consume a very limited amount of each vegetable. Now if they want to sell a little of their produce so that they can buy their other needs, all they have to do is double their production efforts and, presto, they have a surplus which they can trade off to buy rice, fish, soap, salt, meat.
Labor requirements will therefore be much lesser. In contrast to the market-driven agriculture that requires hired labor, production for family consumption will only require family labor. Hence, labor cost will be minimal.
In terms of seed requirements, a pack of seeds for each vegetable item can be seeded three or four times following the scheme of producing for family consumption. In a case like this, farmers no longer need to buy fertilizers or pesticides. The soil can be easily restored if the plants that grown on it are allowed to rot in place rather than burned. This process will eventually restore the land to its original fertile state.
In a highly diversified system, pests are not likely to thrive in dangerous levels since a diversity of insects are also encouraged. Hence, for every pest, there will always be a predator that is likely to gobble it up. This is an immutable natural law that operates without fail under a diversified system. Thus, pesticides will become useless. The vegetables that are produced will be poison-free and safe to eat.
Since the space or area needed for this system will be small initially, the planting schedule can be arranged on a staggered or phases-by-phase basis. One’s one-hectare farm, for instance, can be subdivided into three or four zones. Each zone will be a miniature diversified farm, producing enough to sustain the family requirements for a month. After the first zone is planted, the second zone will start seeding and, after a week, planted. The first is duplicated. Then the third zone follows. The cycle is repeated when harvest in the first zone starts as soon as the harvested plants start to rot.
Under this scheme, a family will be harvesting daily or weekly or as their table requirements dictate. Hunger will be a thing of the past. So will debt that has only worsened their already miserable, impoverished lives. Now they will always have food on the table and a little surplus to sell or exchange for other needs which the farm cannot produce.
No, they will not become extremely rich as the hacienderos in town. Their lifestyle may not even reach the level of the middle class urban dwellers. But they will have food in abundance, food that is healthy and safe. They won’t have to worry about food shortages or price fluctuations in food items because any increase in the prices of rice and vegetables can only be beneficial to them.
Will they be able to send their children to school? If they produce enough surplus, why not? Public elementary and high schools are supposed to be free, and children only need money for transportation, school supplies and other miscellaneous needs. Dropout rates are high because of food concerns as rural children are often tapped by their parents to work in the farm to augment family income. With the problem of food shortage met, the dropout problem should reduce.
This shift in farming systems however is a cultural problem and, as such, requires time to take roots in the consciousness of farmers.
#plantationagriculture
#povertyagriculture
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