PASSION FOR ORGANIC FOOD PRODUCTION

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

I remember those days in the 1990s to early 2000s when Bohol province seemed to convulse with one great passion to do organic stuff. Organic agriculture was quite a passion for everyone in Government and civil society. In those early days, we were all proud to announce, at the drop of the slightest hint, to all who cared to listen, that the province was quite advance in the pursuit of the healthy and environment-friendly lifestyle.

In so many seminars and  meetings mostly paid for by donors, we extolled the virtues of unpolished rice whether pink, red or black. A brand of organic rice named after the project which promoted it became an instant hit. Doing composting on the backyard became a fad. We came to know about a type of worm good at making soil called African night crawler, quite a sexy name for such lowly creature. Several local governments spent their funds setting up composting plants and having organic farms for all the constituents to see.

Our NGO implemented successively two pilot projects on organic food production at the start of the previous decade funded by AusAID and CIDA. While the technologies were basically the same, AusAID assistance was more in building capabilities of people’s organizations to carry out organic farming, while that of CIDA promoted more local government support to chemical-free agriculture.  I remember vividly those days marked by memorizing acronyms such as OHN, FFJ, FAH, IMOs to refer to concoctions to promote farming the organic way

Yes, organic food production was the rage of the hour. You felt guilty eating junk food. As in other advocacies, such as gender equality, many thought they were warriors out to save the world under the banner of organic agriculture. It was a high moment in governance with policies, plans and programs, coordination mechanisms and grassroots implementation, although on a pilot basis, realigned almost as perfectly as cogs in a wheel.

The province had something which other provinces did not have – the Bohol Initiators for Sustainable Agriculture and Development (BISAD) composed of both NGOs and government agencies joined together in a cause to advance organic food production. Organic food production became more of a movement, carried across sectors, and enjoying both mass and institutional support just like the Green Revolution or backyard food production in the 1970s,

We have not heard anything from BISAD for almost two to three years now.  Could it be that organic food production is now suffering what the Green Revolution experienced decades ago, simply losing steam when the novelty wears off, its champions and advocates and foot soldiers or its volunteers overwhelmed with unforeseen constraints? Or is it simply a case of being drowned out by competing advocacies or new interests on the part of those promoting it?

For the last two weeks, we have embarked on this journey to find out the answer. We started here at home, in barangay Laya, where we operate a retreat house and training center called Balay Kahayag. It used to be a beehive where organic food advocates gather to share experiences and learn lessons to better guide their advocacy.

My wife, Jojie, used to have pigs raised in our place according to guidelines provided by the video, Babuyang Walang Amoy, and managed to sell a total of 21 pigs after eight months to friends and colleagues in BISAD. She had the pigs slaughtered and cut into one-kilo packs. In less than two days, everything was sold out, attesting to the popularity of organic pork. I recall her saying that even those who renounced the eating of pork for health reasons were enticed to taste pork again because of the lesser fatty portions and the absence of obnoxious smell.

Why did she give up what could be a profitable venture? The two workers who were taking care of the pigs found it quite tedious going around the barangay to look for plant parts and other ingredients for the feeds. If organic pig-raising will be promoted as family-based enterprise, there is a need for one or two members to just focus on preparing the feeds and the rest of the activities to some other family members. As in other business ventures, specialization is called for as we scale up the number of pigs to be raised the organic way.

Our friend, Joel Uichico, who initiated the Bikes for Education project here in Baclayon, also managed to set up a demonstration farm adjacent to our place. Many young volunteers came to spend hours on the farm, some of them from New Zealand, Germany, Australia and even from People’s Republic of China. Vegetables were somehow coaxed to grow from rocky soil and either given free or sold to some customers in the neighborhood. After two years of busy activity associated with production and marketing of vegetables, the farm reverted to being a grassy adventure for cows.

I can only guess that Joel was not able to hire paid workers when the foreign volunteers left, which is a dilemma in projects which could not generate seed capital for the initial years of the project.

In our trip to Carmen several days ago, I came to visit the office of the Carmen Samahang Nayon Multi-Purpose Center (CSNMPC), a key partner of our NGO in earlier days in the promotion of organic rice production and marketing. Joy Ramirez, it manager, was clearly the most visible CSO partner also of Government in those days. Under her watch, the cooperative grew through the years to establish a network reaching out to every nook and cranny of the organic rice value chain. The cooperative was given full support by donors such as AusAID, CIDA, the Department of Agriculture and the Provincial Government.

I found out in time for the visit that Joy was no longer with the CSNMPC and had moved to the cacao production project of Kennemer company, also in Carmen. Someone from the Board took her place as manager. Somebody in the office hinted that she had differences with the Board regarding how to manage the rice mill finally delivered to the coop three years after it was promised. The rice mill that was procured and delivered by the Department of Agriculture was too big for the requirements of the coop. It has been too expensive to operate; hence, the Board decided on a strategy to use the rice mill once a week for inorganic rice, have a day for flushing out impurities, and the rest of the week for milling organic rice. Like most of us in the organic food advocacy, Joy was taught rice mills should be exclusively for organic rice; otherwise, we run the risk of contaminating the purity of organic produce.

There was no time for me to ask Joy questions regarding the issue and had to rely on what was given to me as information by someone who works at the CSNMPC office.  It’s a technical issue beyond our expertise to comment on or offer a sound opinion. I am only citing it here to indicate the need for a technical body authoritative enough to settle differences of opinion regarding practices related to organic agriculture.

At the same office, I met two nuns, Sister Ma. Teresa Bautista from the Colegio de la Medalla Milagrosa in Jagna and Sister Emilia Buenaseda of the Blessed Trinity College in Talibon. They said they travelled far from their respective congregation to look for organic rice. We engaged them in small talk while they waited for their order to arrive. They said they would like to promote the use of organic rice and other produce in their schools because they believed it was good for health and also for the environment.

Let me just mention here that the two good sisters were not able to get the bulk of their order for organic rice because none of the staff had the key to the warehouse. It turned out the driver had gone to Tagbilaran and brought the key with him, something which could not possibly happen under Joy’s watch.

I suggested to Marissa Tuazon, provincial coordinator of the farmers’ organization PAKISAMA which is helping CSNMPC improve further its marketing operations, that perhaps a close look at existing systems and processes needs to be undertaken to avoid incidents such as missing sales targets for the day because the warehouse key has no duplicate or that staff are not mindful of where to place keys when they leave office premises.

Ms. Tuazon was kind enough to accompany us to the farm of Aquileo “Undoy” Columnas in response to our request that we see examples of organic farm in this part of the province. His rice farm was impressive. The lush growth of the rice plants presented a memorable scene made possible by an abundant supply of water from a nearby river. Ms. Tuazon told us that fresh leaves from the madre de cacao trees planted along a boundary of the farm are gathered and applied on the rice farm as fertilizer in addition probably to some materials from the compost pits.

We were told the farm serves also as showcase for integrated organic farming, but the other components need sorting out: the pigs being raised are given commercial feeds; in another piggery on the site, rice hulls were used as prescribed for flooring materials to avoid the foul smell and to discourage use of water, but commercial feeds were also used.

Undoy, who also owns the popular Tanie’s Chicken House in the poblacion, says he does not raise native chickens anymore. He encourages families to raise them so he can buy from them for the requirement of his restaurant.

In a sense, his farm demonstrates the difficulty of integrating various components in a farm lot. It requires a relatively more sophisticated type of management to ensure prompt delivery of inputs which, in turn, may require more resources in terms of money, time and efforts on the part of the farmer constrained usually by lack of access to capital or credit facility.

Yesterday, instead of having the regular meeting of the executive committee of our NGO, I decided instead to bring our newly-formed 5-member livelihood unit to the increasingly popular Maribojoc Organic Farm. Since I have visited this facility at its inception four years ago and several times thereafter always with guests from projects I have been involved in, I opted this time to be with the manager, Jun Jabonillo, and her guest, Ms. Merly Christina Barlaan, president of the Women’s Federation for World Peace.

Jun kindly allowed me to talk to her first. She told me that her family, specifically two brothers and herself, tried organic farming two years ago on two hectares of their land in Montesunting, Carmen. Ms. Barlaan says after a year of operations the family could not sustain the operations and blamed this on price fluctuations and other factors, such as lack of support from the government; lack of vermicast or organic fertilizer; and difficulty to transport goods from the farm to the market.

She said that organic farming could succeed only as a family-based enterprise. It will take a lot of resources to scale it up as major commercial undertaking, in which case the big corporate players will succeed on account of their built-in efficiency due to its bigger size and enormous funding resources that will give them competitive advantage. For family enterprises to succeed on a relatively bigger scale, she says they should be able to work together either as an association or cooperative.

On the success of the Maribojoc Organic Farm, Ms. Barlaan attributed this to the key role played by Mayor Evasco and the Municipal Government. The Mayor put in Php 2 million from cash awards from DILG for two successive years as winners in the Good Housekeeping category. Jun Jabonillo agreed with this observation and added that the LGU provides funding for the salaries of the 20 staff who run and maintain the farm. Asked on how the farm could be maintained after the final term of the Mayor expires next year, he says they are looking at options, such as making the whole farm wholly a private sector undertaking if the next administration will withdraw funding support to the organic farm.

The organic farm draws visitors from LGUs outside Bohol but the entrance fee of Php 30 per person will not be enough to generate income to ensure financial sustainability of farm operations. The task is to scale up production to meet the high demand created by the vigorous advocacy campaigns and demonstration projects during the past two decades on the merit of organic agriculture as compared to chemical-based farming.

In Bohol, as our brief field survey shows, the passion for organic agriculture has not waned entirely, but it requires leadership at all fronts to address current problems and mobilize with new vigor policymakers and planners as well as the local communities in making it more than a showcase undertaking or a pilot project. We need to address the real problems encountered by local stakeholders rather than be doing things only to please donors who may be trapped by their own conceptual framework and agenda rather than respond concretely to real-life problems encountered by organic food producers.

We can start with having a thorough and objective assessment of what has happened with initial efforts to meet the high demand for organic products – the obvious result of previous advocacy and marketing campaigns. Let us talk about real problems encountered by organic food producers and come up with a matrix of effective interventions at each level (policy; planning and programming; coordination with relevant sectors; and grassroots implementation). Indeed it is time to take this first step in this new phase of turning passion into sustained commitment for better health, a safer environment and more economically resilient families and communities.

Let this new journey begin. ###

NMP/04 March 2015/10.33 p.m.