KABUGAO, Apayao – If there be truth in the song titled, “Montanosa,” or “Montanosa a Nagan,” where part of its lyrics say, “Ili da idiay Apayao, awan kanu ti agtaktakaw; agkawara ti carabao, ngem awan ti mapukpukaw,” so lies more to the truth of the Kabugao Isnag customary on keeping healthy whatever remains of their environment, allowing their swiddens to fallow or rest, leaving it unseeded and wishing their lands blessed with long memories.
Isnag farmers know for a fact their agriculture consists of more than slashing and burning of vegetation for the creation of cultivable swiddens. Over significantly wide areas in the province of Apayao, swidden farming involves continuous regeneration of soil and plant life in both farms and forests, cycles of cultivation and fallow diligently practiced over the years.
Scholars, both from Philippine government and private institutions who have studied such a system explain it as the practice of rotational shifting cultivation.
In their parlance, these agriculture and environment savants classify it as “kaingin,” or slash and burn form of farming and considered the world’s oldest form of agriculture, developed more fully in the tropics in Oceania, Southeast Asia, Africa Central America and part of South America.
In kabugao, uncharacteristic is the lack of terraced farming on most of its mountain slopes. Hardly can a non-Apayao visitor find pond fields in settlements of the indigenous Isnags.
Irrigated agriculture, on the other hand, is limited to sitios occupied by migrant settlers from other parts of Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and from regions nearby Apayao. On the other hand, the Isnag community followed the slash and burn or swidden farming. Isnag majority grow rice, corn, vegetables and a variety of other crops.
They call their swidden farming or kaingin ‘koman.” But the Isnag’s practice of kaingin may soon grind to a halt and become a memory of the past when three large dams outlined for implementation in Kabugao will go full blast, researchers of this study opine.
This study was conducted by the Aliansa dagiti Pesante it Kordiliera (Alliance of Peasants in the Cordillera or APIT TAKO), made possible by a grant from the Lush Charity Pot through Cordillera Response and Development Services (CORDIS-RDS).
Farmers, environment officers, local government representatives and other officials and professionals participated in the forum on Isnag Agriculture and Forest Management which was held February 2023 in Kabugao, Apayao.
During the forum, their concern on construction of the large dams by the Department of Energy was brought out, these being identified as Gened 1, Gened 2 and Sicapo.
There are also four other large dams outlined for implementation in neighboring municipalities (Maton in the municipality of Pudtol and Calanasan 1, Calanasan 2 and Tabayagan in the municipality of Calanasan.
In the overall opinion of participants gathered during the forum, nearly all of Kabugao will be submerged if the first three dams mentioned will be constructed.
Even if just one dam will be built, Isnag farming will be “a memory of the past, “primarily because water from the dam will have successfully inundated whatever remains of constricted area available for rotational cultivation, explain the Isnag Kabugao folks.
They explain they were made to understand that in the Gened Dams Memoranda of Agreement being offered to the people of Kabugao, it will provide for compensation and relocation for Isnags who occupy lands that are titled or can be titled under public land law.
However, there is found, in the opinion of legal experts, a glaring deficiency in the agreement since its provisions cover only narrow spaces just enough for housing and totally inadequate for farming of any type, garden farm, backyard and especially so for rotational shifting cultivation.
“In fact the provisions have been strictly worded as to cut us (Isnags) from where we could plant food for our families,” an Isnag elder said during the forum. “It’s like severing part of our arms or feet.”
Among many of the legal remedies being explored is the environmental protection of Kabugao as a “Department of Environment and Natural Resources DENR-declared critical habitat of over a hundred species of flora and nearly a hundred species of fauna.”
Environmental savants opine such protection measure would pose no problem if DENR will recognize that integral to the maintenance of the area’s ecosystem has been the farm-and forest-balance that the Isnag tribe has maintained for centuries.
Of course, if DENR were to discover that no such balance remained in existence, it would have no reason for it to consider not extending its protection from forest to farm.
To a lot of agricultural extension and development workers both within and outside government, swidden or rotational shifting cultivation is looked at as a primitive form of farming necessary but an inferior antecedent or supplement to “panagtalon.”
They think swidden cultivation should only be a prelude or back-up to wet-rice farming. Among some of these extension workers explained land used for cultivating “uma,” (swidden farm) is not even considered property as the “mangu-uma,” (slash and burn farmer) tills the land without introducing any permanent improvements like terracing, irrigation, drainage and stone wall.
Usually, these farmers’ uma yields are lower than yields derived from “talon” or “payaw,” or “payew.” Among some of the Isnag, it is not even conceivable to grow rice on uma.
But contrary to commonly held biases, some swidden cultivators do enjoy high levels of rice productivity as found by agriculturists Fernando Bagyan, Fernando Mangili and other farmers, who revealed their findings at the forum.
For example, the Adasen tribefolks of Lacub, Abra, assert that their rice yields from their uma are higher than those of their Mabaka and Binongan neighbors who mostly grow their rice on payaw or talon.
On the other hand, the Isnag, too, obtain high yields from their grown payew. Presently, the Isnag have taken to planting two varieties, both of these introduced. The call the one variety “gobyierno,” and the other “aplan,” glutinous rice varieties that they maintain and utilized to make rice cakes. Although they may grow different varieties in a single payew, they segregate these.
Farmers who joined the forum revealed that they, who still fallow their lands for six years or more claimed that from only half a hectare of swidden farming, they are able to harvest a hundred sacks of unthreshed grain.
Computing the hundred sacks of unthreshed grain, the farmers estimated it resulted to about 50 cavans of milled rice. At 50 kilograms per cavan, they showed a production rate of 2,500 kilograms or 2.5 tons.
Note that Philippine average yield is 4.1 tons of “irik” (unthreshed grain) for every hectare and Philippine average milling recovery rate stands at 65%, as per Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data.
This would make the Philippine average production rate for rice at 2.7 tons per hectare. And it would make the estimated production rate of farmers in Kabugao 1.85 times the national average.
Some farmers even got higher yield. In September 2022, an Isnag family in Kabugao was recorded having harvested 1,020 bundles of rice from about a hectare of their koman. One bundle commonly yields 3,75 chupas of irik. Thus, the 1,020 bundles gave the Isnag family an estimated 382.5 gantas.
At a median of 3.25 gantas per cavan, it was roughly equivalent to 118 cavans of irik. And at the 65% standard milling recovery rate, the yield of the Isnag family was roughly 77 cavans or 3,850 kilograms or 3.85 metric tons of bagas (rice). Given that it just came from half a hectare; it would be 2.85 times the Philippine average rice production rate.
When asked about their household consumption, the Isnag farming couple estimated it at 40 bundles per month, equivalent to 480 yearly. From a total harvest of 1,020 bundles, they got 540 bundles surplus, more than sufficient for sharing with kindred and neighbors in the Isnag way of giving.
This farming couple stand apart from the rest of Apayao farmers. The keenly practice the traditional way of slash and burn the let the land fallow or rest for a long period.
Advent of the Bt corn may have given swidden farming an importance but it carries a risk. Bt corn, now an ubiquitous cash crop in Apayao is planted almost anywhere, in former pastures, home yards and in virgin fields.
Farmers estimated they get 40-50 sacks of shelled Bt corn per half a hectare or so, each sack containing 50-70 kilograms, or a median of 60 kilograms. This translates to production rate from 2,400 to 3,000 kilograms or 2.4 to 3.0 tons per half-hectare.
That is 1.14 to 1.43 times the Philippine yellow corn production average rate of 4.2 kilograms per hectare, as per PSA data. At current price of 18 pesos per kilogram, it translates to gross cash income ranging from 43,200 to 54,000 per half hectare per cropping.
Less production expenditures, ranging to about 12,000 to 25,000 pesos per half hectare per cropping, the Isnag net income can come to as low as 18,200 to a high of 41,500 pesos.
Besides fairly substantial cash earnings, Bt corn production has other advantages, like ease in clearing and fertilization of the lands, then planted again.
But repetitive planting of Bt corn without any fallow is bound to result in overutilization and thus in steady soil depletion. This, in turn, will lead to clearing of more lands that again will not be fallowed.
