BY FROILAN GALLARDO
TALAKAG, Bukidnon- Miarayon region, the vegetable growing capital of Northern Mindanao, is beset by growing problems of decreasing yields; dependence to chemicals, and incursions of lowlanders to the Talaandig ancestral land.
Adolfo Santos carefully guided the cow, plowing the green field in circles, each turn turning up the rich, brown earth.
Santos is lucky that it have rained for the past week, softening the fields in Barangay Miarayon, Talakag town in Bukidnon.
He would finish plowing the one-hectare land by the day’s end and tomorrow he would be applying chicken manure to the soil—a good fertilizer that provides nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.
Santos said he would then go to a vegetable trader in Cagayan de Oro to get a loan for him to buy seeds to plant and chemical fertilizers for the carrots to grow well.
“It would have been less expensive to plant carrots have the soil is richer. In the past we do not use fertilizer,” the 48-year-old Talaandig farmer said.
He said the only thing he can save is labor since his farming is a family affair—his wife and three children also help till the field.
Ryan Danio, chief of the Miarayon Lapok Lirongan Tinaytayan Talaandig Tribal Association (MILALITTRA) said the entire 8,000-hectare land of the Miarayon area is covered by the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title issued to the Talaandig tribe in 2003.
“After 18 years, it is only now that we are enforcing our tribal laws,” Danio said during the 18th-anniversary celebration last Oct. 29.
Danio said prior to that, lowlanders, traders, and corporations were able to purchase land in their ancestral domain.
The Talaandig tribe is one of the seven ethnic tribes of the Bukidnon province.
The ancestral domain of MILALITTRA covered five barangays of Talakag town, considered Northern Mindanao’s major vegetable production area.
The area straddles on the slopes between Mt. Kalatungan and Mt. Kitanglad, two of Mindanao’s highest mountains.
Talaandig farmers grow potatoes, cauliflowers, carrots, broccoli, Chinese pechay, and other vegetables on the rolling slopes.
Danio said Talaandig farmers also grow Arabica coffee considered to be one of the best beans in the country.
“Sadly traders and lowlanders are encroaching on our land. We want to stop them,” he said.
Regional Technical Director Carlota Madriaga of the Department of Agriculture said she remembered that area is so inaccessible before that agriculture technicians took a day hiking to Miarayon from Talakag—a distance of five kilometers.
“We hiked up and down the mountains on trails and crossed several rivers before we can reach Miarayon,” she said.
Madriaga said the land was so rich during the 80s that farmers always enjoy bountiful harvests without the use of fertilizers and chemicals.
“Farmers are now using fertilizers and chemicals even those we consider as very dangerous. They are now heavily dependent on them,” she said.
Madriaga said the DA is monitoring the chemical and fertilizer content of the vegetables produced from Miarayon.
She said the DA provided communal irrigation systems and a low-interest financing scheme for the farmers to avail themselves.
Madriaga said they also constructed a vegetable terminal in Barangay Miarayon for the convenience of the farmers.
Dharvy Jumanoy, the Talaandig Indigenous People Mandatory Representative, said the fields have decreasing yields in the past years.
“A corn farmer used to harvest 50 sacks from a half-hectare lot. Now he would be lucky if he gets 20 sacks if he does not use fertilizers and chemicals,” Jumanoy said.
A study conducted by Xavier University College of Agriculture in 2015 said that 1,648 hectares in Miarayon is in need of reforestation to bring back the richness of the land and improve the biodiversity.
It said the slopes in Miarayon are important in preventing floodwaters from rushing to communities downstream.
On December 16, 2011, floodwaters triggered by tropical storm Sendon surged from the slopes of Miarayon to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan killing 957 people and destroying more than P2 billion in properties.
(With support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and Photojournalists’ Center of the Philippines)
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