"He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination." – Jose Rizal
I READ the book, “The End of Nature,” written by Bill McKibben, in the early 1990s. At that time, it got me glued to its unsettling message on global warming.
The book expanded my outlook on nature as an independent force that we have altered or influenced with our actions throughout the centuries. We have not done well. Nature’s current destructive force reflects on us - what we have done to “Mother Nature” to abuse and wantonly exploit her.
"If the waves crash up against the beach, eroding dunes and destroying homes, it is not the awesome power of Mother Nature. It is the awesome power of Mother Nature as altered by the awesome power of man, who has overpowered in a century the processes that have been slowly evolving and changing of their own accord since the earth was born.
I highlight that snippet from McKibben’s book which also sums up for me, the author’s propositions, arguments, and conclusions.
The book came at a time when I was equally disturbed reading about the arrogance of science and its defiance throughout the decades against nature and humankind itself. At its worst, it continues to sustain that Nazi Program, Lebensborn, or the Eugenics of breeding the Master Race. “Let this defective world end, science can create a “Utopian World,” populated by a super breed of men and women.”
To be honest, there is so much to be grateful for with the accomplishments of good science and industrial society in shaping today’s civilization. But Charles Darwin’s faith on the “survival of the fittest,” has infected science pursuits “to terminate the undesirables and tame nature.” That view soon evolved to the pursuit and development of a new world, populated by super beings and creatures.
We have all kinds of arrogant scientists and their propositions obsessed with the pursuit of making gods out of men and as masters of the universe. What happens when bad scientists, big and crooked business, and corrupt politicians conspire, rule, and control the human enterprise? We can be certain about scientists employed by tobacco companies who would not find a link between smoking and lung cancer. When the price is right, vaccines to control epidemics can destroy the targeted population instead. In the quest to control the food supply system, pesticides are mass produced to destroy not only the vectors of diseases but all insects, especially pollinators of crops that are indigenous to a place.
That brings us back to Rizal and the topic of this article, “Agricultural indigenous knowledge and practices in the Cordillera.”
As a fresh graduate of an agricultural university, I believed that local indigenous knowledge and practices of superstitious men and women. We studied Rizal then, but I should have listened to his advice: "He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination."
To look back would have directed us to study and understand how our old folks cooperated with nature to produce food. The title of this article just says what an agricultural indigenous knowledge and practice is in the Cordillera. It is done along with the proper management of natural resources towards sustainability.
The rice terraces are a good example of how agriculture is undertaken in a manner that respects and conserves nature. Where the rice terraces are, the watersheds and forests from where irrigation is tapped are protected and conserved by the local folks.
As a living food machine in our mountains, these magnificent structures were an epitome of biodiversity. In a cluster of rice terraces, the old folks grow from 7-15 varieties of rice. This contributed to the vigor and quality of the rice varieties grown in these structures all these years.
The old folks did not only harvest rice from the rice terraces but they also gathered different kinds of indigenous shells, fishes, frogs, water fern vegetables, and edible insects during the different stages of the rice crop. There were different kinds of birds that visited the rice terraces in the old days.
Indigenous agricultural knowledge and practices can only be associated to a tribe. With rice terraces farming, observed similarities and peculiarities in how practices are done depend on the domain, location, and tribe.
As distinctive, pieces of indigenous agricultural knowledge and practices are carried out by each and every member of the tribe if these are to succeed. Even if individuals are responsible in improving and making an idea, knowledge or practice that were passed on to them work, they do it not as independent or private pursuits.
Their experiences and lessons learned in the pursuit and practice of the tribe’s knowledge and practices will always be shared to the community and village.
So much is dependent on the rice terraces for us to simply give up on them. The culture and traditions of a people are associated to rice terraces farming. Without culture and tradition, there is no identity that binds us to our indigenous roots.
There are many reasons cited by farmers why they are abandoning the rice terraces. This is because modern strategies and approaches in farming encourage them to farm the rice terraces as an individual enterprise.
Under the difficulties of cultivating rice in the rugged steep slopes of the mountains, this is otherwise best done just like the way our ancestors did it as a community enterprise where many of the work are carried out as joint labor with a team.
Without an understanding of indigenous agriculture knowledge and practices; and improving them with the best of the old and new strategies – necessarily not those from arrogant minds – the Cordilleras agriculture can yet soar to its highest potential while its natural resources can be sustained for a long time to come.
Suddenly, in this age of climate change, the best knowledge and practices of the ancient g-stringed men who populated these mountains, worshiped a Supreme God (Kabunian), respected and co-existed with all creation and spirits will return to stay.