Bringing Back the Heirloom Rice

Tinawon variety

Heirloom rice maybe forgotten. Just like our forefathers, it was been kept from the past and today's generation might don't even know about how they looks like, their name, their history of how they fed the past generations.

Who might even know about Makonting, Balatinao, Kadiling, Paskaren, Mayoc, Potaw, Kalias, Knchot, Bongkitan, Dayong, Gal-ong, Lamadya, Kabal, Sing-itan, Lasbakan, Saba, Saboli, Makanining, Talangkay, Kumbisyon, Salili, Kwalti-an, Balasyaw, Ipugao, Palgay, Lalay, Babantinya and others? On how these sturdy rice varieties dwell in the summit of rice terraces in Cordillera. Their time may have gone now. And high-breed variety replaced their name.

From the seat of the 8th Wonder of the World, the preservation of these varieties have started and they called it as The Cordillera Heirloom Rice Project.

The Cordillera Heirloom Rice Project is focused on making traditional rice varieties—the crop that nearly every high-elevation farmer grows—a source of economic opportunity. In doing so, the indigenous people use their knowledge of rice production to develop a sustainable and culturally appropriate economic enterprise. The vision of the Cordillera Heirloom Rice Project includes:

• The establishment of a cooperative business that produces and sells the heirloom rice of the high elevation rice terraces;
• A renewal of social stability through the building of farmers’ cooperatives and the skills and capacity building training of the farmers;
• The implementation of a business model for a vertically integrated, shared-equity rice business, which will give farmers an opportunity to be equal partners with a meaningful stake in the success of the business;
• The building of an economic enterprise that is environmentally sustainable;
• The revitalization, maintenance and use of the high-elevation terraces and watershed areas for their historic purposes.

RICE, Inc., terrace farmers in the provinces of Ifugao, Kalinga and Mountain Province, Eighth Wonder, Inc. (USA), and municipal, provincial and regional government agencies of the Cordillera are collaborating on the project.

Aside from this project, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los BaÑos, Laguna formed the International Rice Genebanks, a bank to over 113,000 types of rice including modern and traditional varieties, and wild relatives of rice. Making it the world’s largest repository of rice genetic diversity.



This bank is similar to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure seedbank located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, about 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) from the North Pole. The facility preserves a wide variety of plant seeds in an underground cavern. The seeds are duplicate samples, or "spare" copies, of seeds held in gene banks worldwide.

Because of these projects, we can revive the once lost varieties. We can still see how these plants may still be exist for future generation of human. And that human may still survive the next millenium.

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The Road to Organic Farming

Filipinos are getting conscious about their health. The rise of different incurable diseases among humans maybe the one problem why our farmers are shifting from the "known technology" and getting back to organic farming. Using organic farming, farmers will lessen the use of chemical-based pesticides in their plants. It will also diminish the cost of capital expenditures and turn these budgets into profit.



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Kalinga drafts 5-year organic agriculture roadmap
By Larry T. Lopez


TABUK, Kalinga, Feb. 24 (PIA) – Kalinga agriculture authorities and stakeholders have organized a three-day workshop to draft the province’s five-year agriculture roadmap for 2012 to 2016.

Rice Program Coordinator Joe Casibang of the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist said the drafting of the plan is in support to Republic Act 10068 or the Organic Act of 2010, which mandates organic farming in the country.

The roadmap prepared in the workshop, according to Casibang, serves as implementation manual of the organic agriculture program in Kalinga.

Among its major components include the organization of the organic program technical committee; various plans reflecting the needs of the different municipalities; production facility, equipment and infrastructure requirements and sources of organic raw materials.

Government promotes the use of organic technology in agriculture from land preparation, inputs, processing and marketing. The system, Casibang said, covers all the stages in farming from production-consumption.

Explaining why government advocates the technology, Casibang said organic agriculture is based on the globally accepted principles that it has direct benefit on health and ecology. The technology completely avoids the use of chemical-based inputs and implements in the production, processing and marketing of farm products and therefore is safe to human health and the environment, he stressed.

He admitted that though that the technical committee has some issues to address before farmers could adopt this like that fact that gradual shift from traditional to organic farming may affect level of production.

The shift from chemical farming to organic or non-chemical farming may bring lower yield for some time but Casibang explained this has long-term advantage to soil condition that would eventually reduce cost of production and bring higher income to farmers. (JDP/LL- PIA CAR, Kalinga)

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Wood: New Technology of Mobile Phone

A London-based university student is set to launch the world's first smartphone made out of wood aimed at the high-end fashionable set.

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Agriculture and Population Together

As the population grows, the demand for foods multiply also. There are large amount of mouth to feed yet our country still can't produce sufficiency. Philippines rely on importation. Our country still the top imported of rice in the world.



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2020 vision looks forward to farming 10 years hence
http://www.malaya.com.ph/02242012/agri1.html


IN the next decade, at least P50 billion to P60 billion in public expenditure is needed each year to modernize Philippine agriculture and fisheries.

Up to 2006, the annual appropriations to the Department of Agricutlure was only about P18 billion to P20 billion. It has since more than doubled to P54 billion.

Thus, the lack of fund has ceased to be a real constraint. Hence, the guarded optimism for healthy growth of agriculture in the coming years.

The big challenge now is to allocate resources properly in a balanced and carefully calibrated manner which will contribute the most to the national goals of reducing poverty and increasing food security.

The anemic performance of Philippine agriculture in the last three decades has not been for lack of appropriate laws, policies, institutions, programs and human resources.

Most of the features of modern agriculture are in place.

What had been lacking for the most part are the political will to converge public and private investments and interventions; and greater transparency and accountability in the use of public funds.

Agricultural development is not just the improvement of agricultural systems. It must also be the empowerment of those working the land, the forests and the waters of the country. One reason is that poverty is especially severe in small farms and in upland and coastal areas.

The transfer of property or usufruct rights to farmers and fishers would improve the structure and efficiency of tenure systems by stimulating them to invest on their assets.

Given control over assets and provided the necessary public support, rural families can then liberate themselves from grinding poverty.

The modernization of Philippine agriculture calls for massive public investments in physical infrastructure, in rural credit and finance, in human capital and institutions. These public investments make agriculture more productive and less risky – and more competitive for private investments.

Appropriate laws, policies, rules and regulations need to be in place to make public institutions work and to define the space within which the private sector has to operate. Most importantly, development to be sustainable and equitable requires the participation of stakeholders.

The Philippine Agriculture 2020 Strategy is a medium term plan articulated by scientists, farmers, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders in a series of consultations and workshops convened by the National Academy of Science and Technology,

It looks forward 10 years from now, when agriculture shall have a major role in reducing poverty, achieving food security and increasing global competitiveness for Philippine produce, sustainability, and justice and peace.

It is essentially a blueprint for the modernization of agriclture not so much from the perspective of planners and legislators but from the point of view of stakeholders, the technical people and the implementors.

It basically reinforces existing programs and policies but richer in organization and technical details.

Most of the added value of the Philippine Agriculture 2020 Strategy come from the updating of road maps for specific industries. These should be translated into operational national commodity programs.

In the near-term, local governments and Department of Agriculture regional offices need to be strengthened. The Bureau of Agricultural Extension must be resurrected while operations and oversights of the National Irrigation Administration must be reviewed.

Land reform needs to be completed.

In the medium- and long-term, a National Land Use Policy must be enacted. To unify lands administration and public lands management, a Lands Administration Authority under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources must be created. ScienceNewsPhilippines

(Dr. Emil Q. Javier is the President of the National Academy of Science and Technology.) -

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