by Lovely A. Carillo
It has been more than an hour of travel already from downtown Davao City over the third district route of Marilog and yet it is still Davao City. There is a long way to go before one finally reaches the Davao-Bukidnon boundary.
But more than the distance and time, one notices that Davao’s mountains are no longer as green as they used to be. To be blunt about it, the hills and mountains that used to be verdant all over are now littered with resthouses and large patches of brown land in between.
It is actually a sad state considering that the area used to be a popular stop-over place for travellers who wanted to buy lettuce and other vegetables as pasalubong for those who were waiting for them at the end of their journey.
This is probably the reason why Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio has tasked city agriculture office chief Leonardo Avila III to ensure the sustainability of agriculture in the city’s uplands.
“Our emphasis next year will be on agroforestry,” Avila said. He defined agroforestry as a strategy for conservation and livelihood for people living in areas that are environmentally critical. It is actually a land use system that integrates animals and crops in the same land management unit, mixing woody and non-woody components.
Avila said the mayor specifically tasked them to establish sustainable agroforestry development interventions in barangay Gumitan, Marilog District, which can be reached only by helicopter or over eight hours of exhaustive hike up and down mountains, across creeks and rivers.
“Well-managed forests and watersheds will result in an empowered community and will improve the economic well-being of rural upland people,” he said.
Avila has already presented the strategy to keep Davao’s uplands sustainable. Dubbed SARUCO or the Sustainable Agroforestry for Rural Upland Communities program, it aims to minimize and, if possible, stop environmental degradation in Marilog district, which trigghered landslides and flashfloods in the area in September this year.
Gumitan has in fact been hit by a double-whammy because aside from the flashflood and landslides, it was also identified as a malaria-stricken area in July this year.
Avila said they are focusing on the planting of trees in the area to prevent future massive soil erosion and landslides, and to conserve soil fertility and groundwater supply.
Using the SARUCO strategy, the city agriculture office seeks to form partnerships with stakeholders, government organizations, non government organizations and peoples organizations. It also seeks to encourage community participation and involvement in the manner of the bayanihan system in future activities.
Those who regularly travel between Davao City and Bukidnon have become used to the ugly sight. However, those who have passed this route for the first time or even a few times, will notice the stark contrast between the developed urban Davao City and the backward rural district of Davao City.
The perception gets worse when the traveller goes through the area at night. By then, the utter lack of lighting along the road which has led to several accidents in the past becomes even more obvious.
Of course, there are the small patches indicating some development, like the impressive Seagull Resort and the Terminal adjacent to it, not to mention the villas and the resthouses that have somehow sprouted in the countryside which are supposedly still part of ancestral domain of the lumads.
With Avila’s SARUCO completely in place by next year, he hopes that in a few years the Marilog district will present a view much different from the present, most probably a greener one, cool to the eyes of tired motorists, or maybe evoke interest among tourists going through the area.
