S1E64 – Was there really a Golden Age of Philippine agriculture?

Miss Joanna Pis-o…from the land of the stonewalled rice terraces of Barlig, Mountain Province, in the central Cordilleras, are you present?”

“Yes, sir, present! I certainly correspond to that long geocultural resumé you just gave hihihi!” the bubbly girl from the ‘BaNaPa’ tri-municipality responded.

“There’s a reason behind such a long geographic reference that I used in singling you out, Miss Ques-o,” I began to set up the topic for the evening’s lecture, “I wanted to talk about those rice terraces you seem to be so proud of.”

“Oh! They are the true 8th Wonder of the World, sir! Barlig’s rice terraces are the genuine unrecognized UN heritage site. That’s why I have an ax to grind against the UNESCO!” Joanna said.

“First of all, I’m glad you don’t have a classmate here who is from Banawe, Ifugao,” I said, “second of all, given that you are coming from a reputable ethnic warrior society, for my own peace of mind, I would like you to refrain from using any more references to bladed instruments, you know, like ‘axes to grind’ and things like that!” the class gets the joke and laugh.

“Yes, Jack, what is it?”

Jack Makataruz spoke up, “Actually, sir, an ax is not considered a bladed instrument. It’s called a weighted cutting edge. A true bladed instrument would be the sword or the knife which produce an incision using a delicate slicing motion. An ax is a crude weapon that cuts with brute force. It lacks the finesse of a precision tool like the knife!”

“Of course not!” Joanna retorted, “you can use an ax to delicately cut off a man’s scalp, you just have to know how to hold it correctly. It’s dual-purpose, it’s a tool and a warrior’s weapon. You can also swing it hard especially when you want to decapitate the—”

I banged the blackboard, “Stop it! Both of you,” I intervened before a full-blown tribal war ignites in my class, “see what you started? Forget about the ax, Miss Joanna, and you Jack—just because you sport a mohawk hairstyle doesn’t qualify you as an expert on the tomahawk, or any ax or any other bladed instrument for that matter.”

“Actually, he IS an expert sir,” Miss Deema butted in, “Jack, why don’t you tell the prof about your knife collecting hobby?”

“I collect shrunken heads!” Joanna interrupted, “I have one that’s been in my family since time immemorial, with its skin still intact and mummified. And you know something, Jack? It bears an uncanny resemblance to you!”

“Hey, hey, hey…bring it down a notch, will you?” I said, trying to regain control of the discussion. It’s a good thing Deema helped me a little bit by throwing her own dagger looks at the two snarling gladiators to quiet them down. Now THAT’s something sharper than both the ax and the knife!

“Anyway, class, before I was derailed by the cultural fervor of these two, I wanted to talk about rice terraces,” I began to lecture properly, “Or, actually, I wanted to talk about RICE, specifically, in the context of this recently trending claim about this supposed ‘Golden Age of Philippine Agriculture’ that supposedly happened during martial law in the 1970s.”

“Aw, that’s all just BBM, sir!” Joanna peeped.

“Oh, no, no, no…I wasn’t intending to relate our discussion with the campaign of any particular presidential candidate,” I corrected.

“She meant to say all of that is just pig manure, sir” Deema butted in.

“Pig manure? I don’t get it–” I said.

“BBM is short for ‘Buris ti Burias Manong’ because nobody really believes that claim!” Joanna added, and her classmates laugh. They’re connecting somehow.

“Alright, joking aside, I want us to objectively evaluate that claim, class,” I said, “the good thing about historical revisionism is that if anyone tries to rewrite events that happened within the lifetime of people who are still around, it’s very easy to fact-check. There will be ample first-person experience to validate the claim that goes back to the past.”

“So long as it doesn’t reach too far back in the past, sir, like the Spanish Regime!” Deema said, cracking up the class.

“Yes, I know you all heard about that stupid DepEd module. Well this is different. Some people claim that in the 1970’s and early 1980s the agricultural sector experienced a booming success, supposedly because of modern irrigation pumps, and the introduction of scientifically-developed rice varieties, commercial fertilizers and greater access to rural banks’ credit. Now if any of this is true, I don’t really care which past politician gets the credit. I just like to find out from your own families’ and communities’ experience if it’s true.”

“The irrigation part is a total lie, sir, as far as highland farmers are concerned. When it rains, the water flows by gravity from the topmost terraces to all the other terraces down below. We’ve never used or needed any mechanical pumps,” Joanna explained.

“As far as ‘miracle rice’ varieties are concerned that’s also a lie, sir,” Jack said, “we are importing rice today from neighboring Asian countries.”

“That’s true, Jack, but you know the romantic story they love to say about that. Those countries ‘stole’ their rice-growing technology from our experimental farms in Los Baños, including our miracle rice, the ‘IRRI-151’ the ‘IRRI-172’ Have you heard of that?”

“All the time, sir. But today don’t you notice none of those so-called ‘miracle rice’ are being grown anywhere, anymore? The truth is, the credit for increasing our rice production both in quantity and quality goes to the local Filipino traditional farmers, not to some overrated international researh laboratory.”

“And your proof is…?” I challenged.

“Nobody has heard of any scientific rice names, even when you go to the market, sir. The best quality rice you can buy today are all traditional–Dinorado, Sinandomeng, Biniding, Jasmine, Milagrosa—all indigenously-developed varieties scientists have never even heard of.”

“There’s even one variety of rice our people developed that nobody can steal from us, sir,” Joanna said teasingly.

“Is that a fact? Do tell us more about it, Miss Cream-o,” I said.

“It’s called Kintuman Rice, sir, it’s a variety of brown rice that grows only in riverbanks and rice terraces in the Cordilleras. It refuses to grow anywhere else!”

“That’s amazing,” I said, “you mean that rice has a mind of its own, it has geocultural loyalty?”

“I guess you could say that, sir. It needs a specific soil, a specific alkalinity of water, a specific growing climate and a specific time of year. It is such an endemic species it simply cannot be cultivated anywhere successfully. Oh, they can plant it anywhere, and many have tried, but the rice stalks end up with empty pannicles.”

“Empty what??” I asked.

“Empty pannicles, sir. The rice looks ripe but when you pound the palay, there’s no grain inside. Some may think it’s odd but it’s a fact. It is not only those rice terraces farmers who are Igorot, even the rice plant itself is Igorot! Both can only thrive in the Cordilleras.”

“So you’re saying you’ve never experienced this so-called martial law’s golden age for agriculture, you have always been self-sufficient in food?”

This time Miss Deema spoke up, “Oh, practically the whole Cordilleras experienced that golden age, sir. I remember this from my days at the state agricultural college where I went for my undergrad.”

“Aha! Now we’re talking. Go ahead, Miss Deema, tell us about this wonderful golden age during martial law that was experienced in the great farming lands of the Cordilleras…” I said then sat back. This I wanted to hear!

“Well, sometime in the late 70s sir there was this group of experts sent by Malacañang to teach modern techniques to traditional farmers. They criticized how we only grow two crops a year, leaving the soil in those terraces to recover during the fallow perod.”

“That actually sounds pretty scientific to me,” I said.

“No, but they insisted that upland farmers adopt their so-called rice-fish culture technogy, where you grew rice part of the year and used the terraces like fishponds the rest of the time.” Deema said.

“Is that the start of a very funny joke?” I butted in, “Are you going to say they taught upland farmers how to raise GOLD FISH?”

“Wow! You almost got it, sir!” Deema said, “but actually what they introduced into rice farms all over the Cordilleras in the 70s was the so-called ‘Golden Kuhol’ which is an invasive species of edible snails.”

“Well that sounds pretty innovative to me, what’s wrong with adding a little seafood to your diet?”

“We don’t like snails, sir!” Jack popped up, “you can go to any cañao anywhere and you won’t find anybody serving snails!”

“Uh-huh…I see. But I heard this was actually a scientific approach–this introduction of biodiversity. Aren’t the snails supposed to keep the population of farms pests in check?” I remember reading that in some Department of Agriculture pamphlet when I did some filming work for CECAP in the 1980s.

“They’re SNAILS, professor!” Deema said. When she addresses me as ‘professor’ it usually means she’s on ‘maximum sarcasm mode!–“they’re mollusks that crawl along at the world-record speed of ten inches per hour, sir. Those golden kuhols are not going to scare away any rice-feeding birds!”

“Riiiight…” I conceded, “what was I thinking? Perhaps they ate little worms that crawled even slower than they did, huh?”

“The only thing they ate was the riceplants on which they also laid their eggs,” Joanna said.

“That’s terrible!” I said, “how can anybody be proud of any golden age like that?”

Joanna picked up the discussion, “It’s way beyond terrible, sir. Our rice terraces were damaged permanently, Up to this day, our farmers are still haplessly picking out Golden Kuhol eggs sticking to ricestalks, they have become an intractable farm pest!”

“Forty years later sir, Cordillera farms are still reeling from the stupidity of that kind of ‘golden age’ planning mentality. It’s a product of the penchant of Marcos for appointing his so-called ‘golden boys’ all over the place.”

“I see. So you guys didn’t really see much of that vaunted irrigation claim, where they watered vast tracts of agricultural land?”

“Oh, they wanted to do more than that, sir!” Joanna spoke again, “they wanted to submerge entire villages to build dams, but the people fought back. They fell for the golden kuhol, they sure as hell were not going to fall for any golden dams!”

“Well,” I wrapped up, “I wish the real BBM could hear all of this, but I gather he’s busy cooking pinakbet with golden kuhol!”*

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