FEATURE: Transforming farming

Mindanao is the poorest part of one of Southeast Asia's poorest performing economies - the Philippines.

And most poor people are farmers, weighed down by a lack of education, large families, minimal access to credit and the backwash from years of insurgency.

In a recent study, the Asian Development Bank has identified a "failure to fully develop the agricultural sector" as one of the main causes of poverty in the country.

Despite the rather bleak picture painted by the ADB, there are bright spots.

Tom Fayle

Last Updated: Wed, 19 May 2010 09:12:00 +1000

One of them is a community based landcare project in northern Mindanao and the Visayas that's now been going for more than 10 years, with the help of Australian and other aid money.

Founded in 1997, the landcare movement aims is to tackle rural poverty by boosting the productivity of individual farms and farming families, through cooperation, education and leadership.

Initially, the focus of the movement was to curb massive soil erosion in Mindanao's upland areas.

Erosion caused by a combination of high rainfall, ploughing vertically on steep slopes and the constant growing of a single crop - usually corn, or maize.

The situation was so bad that after a few years yields would drop so low that farmers had to abandon their land and try to move elsewhere.

A former soldier, Marcelino "Ma" Patindol, now in his sixties, is the founding chairman of the landcare movement in the Philippines.

He says things started to change when increasing numbers of people started to adopt the landcare system.

"When they joined the landcare organisations, from then we taught [farmers] how to cultivate like this with complex [techinques like] the agro-forestry, farming system," he said.

At the heart of the movement is a series of simple conservation farming techniques, ploughing along the natural contours of the land; the creation of terraces and strips of vegetation; and crop rotation and diversification to help maintain the quality of the soil.

Like Ma Patindol, Alejandro Lobiano has also been with the landcare movement from the start.

While still poor, he says his two and a half hectare farm does now produce enough to allow his four children to go school; and for the family to have enough to eat and there to be a decent roof over their heads.

"Before it was really [about] survival, we were dependent on corn...the whole family really lived in the survival kind of live."

"Before we cannot build houses, because we don't have wood, but now we have a house of our own and even money to support the schooling of the children."

It's estimated that around 8,000 farmers in the northern Mindanao and Visayas regions are involved in the landcare program.

But the focus now is much broader than just soil degradation and erosion control.

Crop diversity

Samuel Abrogar's farm clings to the side of a steep river valley in Barangay Madaguing, with dramatic views across to the mountains beyond, a former insurgent area known as the "killing fields".

His farm was once degraded, virtually treeless cattle country which grew little more sharp leaved cogon grass.

But since embracing landcare techniques it's blossomed and incomes have grown substantially.

Sam Abrogar's now one of a growing cluster of farmers focusing on bananas - but still within a diversified and integrated farming system - that cooperate on a whole range of livelihood issues, including crop planning and marketing.

"We can see the potentials of marketing in banana, so we will continue planting banana, but not in a mono-crop system of farming, in an integration system of farming."

He says the system of farming is flexible enough to be able to change direction if needed.

"If there is a potential of other crops, then may be we can fence the, but for us it's this kind of technology that we said it is better than what we had before."

Expanding program

One of the key figures responsible for introducing and developing the this more sustainable approach to upland farming is Agustin "Jun" Mercado Junior, of the World Agro Forestry Centre .

His Claveria research farm serves as an education centre, often hosting large groups of growers from near and far for lectures and demonstrations..

Jun Mercado says the key for securing farmers' longer term incomes is the planting of trees, especially rubber, in combination with annual crops such as maize and upland rice.

"We are now working...on extending this rubber agro-forestry, to expand the technology to wider areas in the Philippines because we thought if you had rubber, that would provide a decent income through upland farmers as well as providing constant employment to the extra population," he said.

"That would reduce population influx to their city, because a rubber system is a labour intensive, meaning the system would be able to absorb the extra population and without having a labour intensive system like rubber and agro-forestry."

He says it's possible this approach could be applied to the rest of the country.

"[It's possible for] most of the places in the Philippines, because it is in the tropics is suitable for rubber. There are a few places which...this rubber is not suited, but most of the places in the Philippines is rubber is suited, so rubber agro-forestry can be adapted."

It hasn't been plain sailing for the landcare movement, and last year the umbrella Landcare Foundation of the Philippines hit the financial rocks and was rescued by additional funding by Australia.

That money - funnelled through Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) will run in the middle of next year.

Ben Aspera, Landcare Foundation's executive director, says he's hopeful his organisation will continue to operated until it renders itself obsolete.

"For non government organisations funding support is a common problem, but for me it does not bother me much."

"I would be more concerned with how to stay in the landcare movement, meaning the farmers who have organised themselves into landcare movements or adaptors of sustainable farming systems, that is what concerns me right now."

"And for this next eleven months grant, Asia is providing us, we are trying to focus our attention to that."