What Can UP Los Baños Scientists Learn From Sagada Farmers Growing Crops Amidst Climate Change? Plenty! Including Volumes On Organic Farming

I have always been looking for ways and means by which farmers can help themselves improve very much their farm earnings without spending much. (You can understand that from my being an Ilocano and the son of a non-rich farmer.)

Today, Inquirer lady reporter Krixia Subingsubing takes me up the mountains of Northern Luzon to Sagada, famous for its hanging coffins, and tells me this story: “Sagada Farmers Return To Their Roots”
(newsinfo.inquirer.net, image from Inquirer). “Return to their roots?” – To me, a son of a farmer in Pangasinan, this is a pleasant surprise!

Actually, by “roots” Ms Krixia means this:

“In (this) Mountain Province town, women villagers relearn traditional way(s) of growing crops as impact of changing climate alters agriculture cycle.” Nota Bene: “relearn traditional ways of growing crops.” So, today, “in Bangaan, a small village in this tourist town, vegetables and coffee grow among clouds.”

“This is what has sustained the town generation after generation,” says Danelia Toyoken, one of the farmers in Bangaan. Sagada is home to mostly Igorot, the collective term for indigenous peoples in the Cordillera which means “people from the mountains.”

“But in recent years, a mercurial climate and a soil made acidic by commercial-grade pesticides have made farming and gardening almost like gambling … What used to be a predictable science became unreliable,” Ms Toyoken says.

I say, as a UPLB aggie graduate, “Chemical farming is science that has outlived its usefulness!”

Ms Toyoken and other women of Bangaan “took upon ourselves to return the richness of the mountain soil” by bringing back organic farming – without chemicals, without pesticides.”

Says Ms Krixia, “They are not alone. Across Sagada, women are increasingly at the forefront of efforts toward sustainable farming and environmental conservation.”

I say as a UPLB agriculturist: “If the men don’t re-learn by themselves, the women should teach!”

“Ms Toyoken and other women of Bangaan ‘took upon ourselves to return the richness of the mountain soil by bringing back organic farming – without chemicals, without pesticides.’”

I now ask, as a graduate of the premier learning school for agriculture in the Philippines: UP Los Baños, what are you doing?!

UPLB people, as you twiddle your thumbs in lowland Los Baños, Laguna, Ms Krixia says: “Across Sagada, women are increasingly at the forefront of efforts toward sustainable farming and environmental conservation.” No thanks to any nearby or faraway college or university of agriculture!

Hurray for Sagada women!

“As in most parts of the world, indigenous peoples, especially women, bear the responsibility of protecting the environment and preserving our practices,” says Gwendolyn Gaongen, a member of the council of elders on ‘batangan’ (forest management) system).”

UPLB and I, we have more to learn from up the mountains of Sagada!

“It is all the more important to empower and capacitate them [to] harness their contributions,” Ms Gwendolyn says, adding that “these efforts are rooted in the tribe’s “inviolable relationship” with the expanse of land – about 10,000 hectares of it — that is Sagada.”@517