By Manny Piñol
If there is anything that frustrates me in this long journey called Biyaheng Bukid, it is the realisation that in many areas of Mindoro and Panay Island, internet services are very poor if not non-existent.
That is the reason why I could not immediately post updates in this page and this article is a day late.
Anyway, let me tell you two stories of two farmers who live in two separate islands but who have basically the same stories to tell.
In Mindoro Occidental, I was brought by leaders of the Rody Duterte movement in the island to a remote village called Yawyawin in San Jose and there I saw the dire situation of farmers who were affected by the El Niño and who have long been hoping for help from government.
I met the village chief, Wilfredo Carbonnel, who is also a farmer and he told me that his barangay has a 5,000-hectare area, 75% of which is planted to rice.
Of the total area, however, only half is irrigated, mostly using diesel-powered water pumps, and the rest is rain-fed.
The poor among them could not afford water pumps while those who are better off in life could plant rice all year round because of the availability of water.
That made me think of the squandered potentials for additional rice production.
What if all the rain-fed rice farms in the country are provided with water pumps? That would actually the farmers to plant twice every year.
I see this as an exciting opportunity and an immediate intervention to increase rice production in the country.
If I could find an additional 1-million hectares of potential rice fields which could be made productive through the use of water pumps and if these areas would only yield 4 metric tons of palay every harvest which could be twice a year, then the country could produce an additional 8-million metric tons.
With a milling recovery of 60%, that actually would be more than enough to cover the rice supply shortfall of the country which is about 2.2-million metric tons a year.
These exciting thoughts were swirling in my mind while we were negotiating the highway from Kalibo, Aklan to Estancia in Iloilo, when I saw an elderly farmer drying his palay along the highway in barangay Timpas just a few kilometres away from Roxas City, the capital of Capiz and home province of administration presidential candidate Manuel Roxas III.
Isidro Dizon said his area does not have a solar drier and he and his fellow farmers have to dry their produce in the concrete highway.
He also claimed that in spite of the fact that Roxas was one of the most powerful and influential figures in the Aquino administration, their lives hardly changed.
“Waay man gani kami katilaw abono. Bakal lang kami abono por kilo kay indi man namon kaya,” Dizon told me.
(We have not even received fertilisers. We buy our fertilisers by the kilo because we can’t afford it.)
Like the farmers in Barangay Yawyawin, Dizon also dreams of a water pump so he could plant rice in his 3/4 hectare farm and improve his life.
Two stories of two farmers living in poverty in two islands of the country.
With Rody Duterte, the man who has promised Change in the country, I am sure that their stories will have a happy ending.
I promised both of them that I will be back to make their dreams come true and fulfill Duterte’s promise that his government will care for the poorest of the poor.
(Photos show Barangay Chairman Wilfredo Carbonnel in the parched rice fields of Barangay Yawyawin and Isidro Dizon drying his palay along the highway in Roxas City. Photos by Bong Piñol)
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