Off the Beaten Track: Paving the way for science in agriculture
Obsession with research, according to Cynthia Villar, chairperson of the Senate Committee for Agriculture and Food, is out of touch with the farmers’ real and immediate needs.
Yet it is also in the same breath that Villar, big-time land converter and principal author of the Rice Tariffication Law, ignored farmers’ longstanding demands for agrarian reform and farm mechanization, among others.
The very political elite safeguarding a few landed families’ monopoly over lands antagonizes agricultural research. Most of these landlords who have captured posts in the civilian bureaucracy oppose scientific development and instead offer palliative aid to Filipino farmers mired in a myriad of systemic problems.
Still, Filipino agricultural researchers are adamant about pursuing their field despite such undervaluation. For decades, this unabashed lack of institutional support and assistance have impeded the realization of scientific innovations that could ease the struggles of farmers and farmworkers.
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Bearing blessings
Recognizing the role of leguminous crops like mungbean (or more commonly known as munggo) in the Filipino diet, Lantican devoted his time and effort to its innovation.
True to its name, his discovery of Biyaya mungbean variety has yielded blessings to farmers, with its abundant produce and greater resistance to rust and leaf diseases.
Lantican also co-authored a study on the Southern corn leaf blight, a fungal disease that had infected a number of crops in UP Los Banos in the 60s. They found out that the spoilt crops shared a singular trait: T-cytoplasm, which caused disease susceptibility. This led to the awareness of the vulnerability of monocrop plantations, thus instigating the mitigative method of growing different varieties of crops.
Despite this breakthrough, Lantican’s research did not gain much initial recognition from the public. It took about a decade—when Helminthospcrium maydis fungus decimated billions worth of corn crops in the US—before the country, and eventually the world, realized the saving grace of Lantican’s research.
Had the state and public given support and appreciation to their research, Lantican would have long helped the global community thwart prior corn crises.
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Knocking out nuisance
Romulo Davide dedicated 16 years of his life to writing more than a hundred research papers on nematology.
With his discovery of the fungi P. lilacinus and P. oxalicum in soil, Davide created the first non-hazard biological control product, BIOACT, which eliminates nematode infestations in farms all over the world. It replaced the highly toxic and expensive chemical nematicides used back then, which not only did most Filipino farmers find unaffordable but are also known to contaminate bodies of water.
Having won the ‘Outstanding Agricultural Scientist’ award in 1994, Romulo donated his cash prize of P500,000 into his initiative entitled Farmer-Scientists Research, Development and Extension Training Program (FSTP) in his hometown in Colawin, Cebu. This program aimed to teach farmers basic skills in crop cultivation and animal husbandry, with modernized farming techniques and machines.
FSTP encouraged farmers to be at the forefront of developing technology for their own use. Eventually, they made their own fertilizers, such as chicken manure and vermi-compost, which increased their income and productivity by a huge margin.
Moreover, this practice developed their capacity to independently innovate products for their own benefit, and abstain from using chemical-intensive fertilizers sold by large agro-industrial companies like DuPont and Syngenta.
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Cultivating Cultures
Florencia Palis asserted that not only hard sciences contribute to the body of agricultural research, but so can social sciences.
Employing a participatory approach, Palis studied the culture of farmers in various parts of the Philippines and its relations to their farming practices.
Her findings proved that farmers’ cultures are indeed a vital force for bringing about the collective use of pesticide and fertilizers. Palis found out that their traditional method had posed a great risk to their health, for their pesticide of choice from the market exposed them to harmful chemical substances.
Palis’ studies launched farmer field schools in Central Luzon, the rice granary of the Philippines, in 1992. These were learning facilities implementing collective farming, part of which is the integrated pest management method that encourages farmers not to spray insecticide until a certain amount of return on their expenses is reached by the collective.
Palis’ contributions to agricultural research helped build the foundation of farmer involvement in the discovery of the best methods that fit their cultures, that of cooperation and pakikisama.
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Curing Crises
Because farmers carry the brunt of the chronic rice crisis in the country, Artemio Salazar made possible a healthy food option and rice-substitute to relieve some of their burdens.
In 2017, Salazar created the RiCo blend—a combination of rice and corn grits at a 70-:30 ratio, respectively. This food-alternative reduced the country’s dependence on imported rice by providing at least 50,000 metric tons in Metro Manila markets in early 2019, solely sourced from local farmers, according to the Department of Agriculture.
He led the team that developed the IPB Quality Protein Maize Var. 6 (IPB Var. 6), which they had determined to be an ideal corn variety for this blend owing to its nutritional contents.
Despite the recently enacted Rice Tariffication Law threatening to propel the rice price hike, the RiCo blend remains to be sold at only 47 pesos per kilo. This is marginally less than the P60 price of standard quality, according to the price ceiling set by retailers.
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Sowing Societal's Seeds
The worsening societal conditions have increasingly prompted a growing community of scientists to break free from their ivory towers and to communicate their findings accurately at a level that policymakers might find alarming and that the public could ultimately benefit from.
Though some studies may not reap immediate rewards for the farmers, they aim to uproot from the soil the blight and bane that hamper the entire peasantry’s subsistence. Any scientific project, after all, takes years to elicit relevant results. It can only be carried to completion through a long-term guarantee of support and assistance by the public and, most importantly, by the state.
To address the prevalent and complex agricultural issues plaguing the country, the direction of the agriculture sector must be steered not by the profiteering schemes of tycoons or local oligarchs, but by scientifically-grounded and peasant-oriented data.
Support for public research and development is a necessary investment in the nation’s future—an investment that will feed the public even during the worst droughts and floods, and empower the farmers to sustain an economy still heavily reliant on their labor.
