P-Noy attends to rice needs of IPs

By Estanislao Albano, Jr.

TABUK CITY, Kalinga – The Department of Agriculture (DA) recently launched a new program intended to make indigenous peoples (IPs) living in hilly areas attain self-sufficiency in traditional rice varieties.
Felicitas Balmores of the Tabuk City Agricultural Services Office, one of the four agricultural technologists from the province who attended the training for facilitators for the Upland Rice-based Cropping Systems for Indigenous Peoples program in Malaybalay City, Bukidnon recently, said that the new activity under the Agri Pinoy Program of the new administration is exclusively for IPs.
“The focus is to help IPs increase the production of traditional rice varieties and at the same time attain food sufficiency,” Balmores said.
Balmores said that during the training, the 63 agricultural workers from the different provinces with IP populations and the resource speakers had agreed on the definition of upland as rice production areas with slopes ranging from 18 to 44 degrees with no dikes.
Balmores said that the participants and the resource speakers in the training do not recommend areas with steeper slopes due to the erosion of top soils during rains unless the farmers practice the Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT).
Balmores said that during the seminar, they were taught how to conduct farmers’ field school (FFS) for upland rice technology following the growth stages of the rice plants.
She informed that there is yet no prescribed technology for the facilitators to follow but that this will depend on the results of the techno demo farms that will be established in pursuit of the program.
She said that the Kalinga delegation to the training plan to establish techno demo in Agbannawag and Balawag, both this city, to promote upland rice farming and make use of the idle grassy lands in the two barangays.
“The difference between the upland rice farming the program is promoting and the kaingin system is that the latter involves the cutting of trees while the first does not,” Balmores said.
Balmores said that for the project, the provincial government will provide the rent of the tractor and farm inputs, the Tabuk City LGU the technical assistance while the Agricultural Training Institute of the DA will bankroll expenses for the FFS including the travelling expense of the facilitators.
Balmores informed that during the training, the participants recommended to the DA that the government should also recognize IP farmers in upland areas who follow the SALT by adding a category in the DA’s Gawad Saka awards for them.
Balmores said that the participants all admitted kaingin farming exist in their areas.
In the case of Tabuk, kaingin farming is blamed for the disappearance of sources for irrigation and domestic water and likewise the scarcity of wood for construction purposes.