Monday, October 29, 2007 Davao Sur organic rice spreads like wildfire
MAGSAYSAY, Davao del Sur -- Putting down her "garab" or harvesting knife for a short rest, Juanita Boliva, 36, scans the wide open rice fields of Bala village, as far as her eyes can see.
"We've been here since six in the morning," she says, wiping the beads of sweat from her sunburnt forehead with her forearms. "We won't stop until we get this whole field harvested before sundown."
Her fellow harvesters, mostly in long-sleeved dark shirts, wearing wide-brim buli hats to shield them from the searing heat of the mid-morning sun, kept slicing at the thick clusters of brownish- green rice stalks, now heavy with golden palay grains.
It's harvest time here at the panoramic rice fields of picturesque Bala village and farmfolks like Juanita, along with her relatives, are out in the fields -- the third time this year -- harvesting the mature rice grains.
Just a short distance away beside the narrow, pebble-strewn road, is the rice thresher, chug- chugging away the rice stalks, filling up the 50 kg white poly sacks.
Filled with palay grains, villagers will soon load them into trucks which haul the sack-filled grains to the big rice mills in nearby Bansalan town where they are milled into a special kind of white rice.
This rice harvested by Juanita isn't just any ordinary rice. And the rice farm in Bala village, Magsaysay, isn't just any rice field. This is a special organic rice grown here using only organic fertilizers from rice wastes.
Big piles of rice stalks, turning brown under the sun, will soon be carried to wide rectangular ditches where they are allowed to decompose along with organic wastes like manure from chickens, horses, carabaos, cows, and even fish intestines. In four to six months. This pile of rice wastes will turn to organic fertilizer.
This organic rice farm here is run by farmers belonging to the Diversified Organic Farming System (Dofs), a special rice production program set up by the local government of Magsaysay town.
Farmers here don't use any kind of chemicals to grow this special kind of rice and they make sure this rice has not been adulterated with other varieties of rice. "It's safe because we don't use chemicals or any pesticides to kill off the usual pests that bother the growing of rice here," says Juanita who joined the Dofs last year.
The only fertilizers they use for growing their organic rice are the "organiz fertilizers" which they produced from rice stalks, weeds and organic wastes. This group of farmers doesn't use any kind of synthetic fertilizers and costly chemicals available here from local agro-suppliers.
"You see, we can't use them because they suck out the nutrients from the soil. If we use them, our rice fields will produce less rice," says Juanita.
Magsaysay farmers call their organic rice "Magrice" an acronymn for Magsaysay Rice, to identify it closely with its origin here. The "Magrice" brand name is now spreading like wildfire and becoming more popular in the supermarkets and groceries of Davao, Cebu and Manila. A number of foreign buyers who heard about this rice have been sending inquiries to the Department of Trade and Industry Davao regional office asking how they can order this organic rice in big volumes on a regular basis.
Rice farmers here got a lot of help to start this organic rice project from the Don Bosco Diocesan Youth Center which runs a program called "Integrated Programs and Initiatives for Sustainable Agriculture and Development". To make sure the quality of rice is maintained, the organizers set up a strict "internal quality control system" or IQCS among farmer participants like Juanita and her relatives.
Funding and logistics were provided by local town officials of Magsaysay like Mayor Jess Lumanog and Vice-Mayor Arthur Davin who believe in the organic rice program which is also attracting attention from other rice-growing regions. "Its worth all their efforts and perspiration despite the heat. We're supporting them all the way. We want to make sure they get very good prices for their organic rice," says Lumanog.
