A RICE farmer from the region's rice capital, Banay-banay, Davao Oriental, has emerged as the country's outstanding rice farmer for the year in the annual Gawad Saka Search of the Department of Agriculture (DA) held last December 12, at the Philippine International Convention Center.

Leading this year’s outstanding individuals are rice and corn farmers Genevieve Madelo of Davao Oriental and Leon Bonilla, Jr. of Occidental Mindoro, the DA bared.

Madelo, a single mom of four, first worked as an overseas Filipino worker and saved enough to buy a rice farm in 2001. Applying innovative technologies she learned from attending DA-sponsored Farmer Field School programs and other learning avenues, she made the farm profitable. She also taught herself farm management and was thus able to shift to organic fertilizers and other organic farm inputs to deal with pests.

As a result, she averaged 7.7 metric tons per hectare for three consecutive cropping seasons.

Corn farmer Bonilla has been a farmer all his life, starting out by just helping his father manually tilt and plant corn in their farm. He continued with farming even as he already had his own family, but this time, he sought the help of experts from the local government of Sablayan thru its Municipal Agriculturist. He learned new technologies and production management systems and was able to expand his area of production from four hectares (has) to 25 has planted to rice and various vegetables.

The Gawad Saka is designed to recognize the efforts and improvements made by individual farmers from all over the Philippines. Through the years, Gawad Saka has chronicled the successes of the farming communities and stimulated the farmers to improve the quality and quantity of their harvests.

The two top farmers and 19 runners-up and regional winners received a total of P7-million in cash prizes and project grants.