There will soon be no primary or virgin forests left in the country, according to several forestry experts. This is scoffed by skeptics who claim it is an exaggeration.
But the figures cannot go wrong. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that, in 1934, 57 percent of the country’s total land area of 30 million hectares were covered with forests, with almost half of that to virgin forests.
In a span of 50 years, almost two thirds of the forests were lost to deforestation as indicated in a study by Frances Korten of the Ford Foundation in 1990. “Where have all our forests gone?” environmentalists decried.
Most of the remaining forests in the country are located in the uplands. To save the remaining forest cover from further denudation, the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC), a non-government organization based in Kinuskusan, Bansalan, Davao del Sur, launched Sustainable Agroforest Land Technology (SALT 3) in the late 1980s.
SALT 3 follows the concept of the original SALT or Sloping Agricultural Land Technology. “As a form of agroforestry, we aim to get the good things of agricultural production and reforestation,” says Jethro P. Adang, the MBRLC director.
In a two-hectare farm, one hectare is allotted to food production while another one hectare is planted to trees. The trees are planted in three different zone compartments: 10-15 years (like acacia and narra), 5-9 years (mangium, mahogany, etc.), and 1-4 years (ipil-ipil, sesban, etc.). “While waiting for the trees to grow, we advise farmers to plant short term crops like vegetables, tubers, and crawling plants like ubi and sweet potato,” Adang says.
As a source of immediate income, the lower portion of the farm is planted to various crops. Still the concept of the original SALT is followed: two rows of nitrogen fixing shrubs and in between the hedgerows, crops are planted. Every month or so, the hedgerows are cut and the cuttings are placed below the crops to serve as mulching materials and as fertilizer.
Aside from providing decent income to upland farmers, Adang believes that by planting trees, they can help alleviate the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. “Trees and forests play a vital role in regulating the climate since they absorb carbon dioxide,” he says.
Uplanders – which comprised about 30% of the country’s total population with almost half of them living within forest areas – are often referred to as the “poorest of the poor” in Philippine society since they survive below the poverty line.
Upland inhabitants are primarily poor farming families with an insecure land tenure. “The upland farmer faces a very dark future unless something can be done for him soon,” said Rev. Harold R. Watson, former MBRLC director.
This is the reason why it developed a sustainable vegetable gardening system called Food Always In The Home (FAITH). Aside from providing food, the non-conventional scheme can also reduce a farmer’s heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides which pose health hazards and wreak havoc on the environment.
“FAITH is a type of vegetable gardening that can provide the necessary protein, vitamins and mineral requirements needed by a family with six members,” Adang says. “We designed it in such a way that it requires minimum labor.”
As the name suggests, there will be vegetables – and some fruits – all throughout the year if its recommended plant is properly followed. Based on a study, the garden can provide 300 grams (or one bowl) or fresh vegetables daily.
The recommended FAITH garden size is six by sixteen meters. However, the central feature is basket composts, a series of raised garden beds into which bamboo baskets are set about one foot in diameter and depth. These are filled with little animal manure (particularly goat) and some decomposed organic garbage and packed with leaves of leguminous trees and shrubs.
If manure is not available, the leaves of leguminous trees and shrubs (flemingia, rensonii, kakawate and/or indigofera) will do the trick. These are stuffed into the basket composts to provide nitrogen and other nutrients needed by growing crops.
The MBRLC is known as Davao del Sur’s goat center. It has been raising dairy goats since the 1970s. Today, people come to the center not only to buy breeding stock, but also to taste its fresh goat’s milk.
“When we started raising goats for milk production, not too many Filipino farmers were interested,” said Watson. Filipinos were not used to drinking milk, much less goat’s milk. So much so that the milk they produced was given to the pigs.
But time has changed. Filipinos are now aware that goat’s milk is much better than the preferred cow’s milk. Although it is a small animal, “a purebred goat can produce as much as 4 liters of milk if the female goat is given a ration that meets all of her nutritional requirements,” Adang points out.
At the MBRLC, wastes are no waste. The wastes are used as “feed” for the night-crawling earthworms (Eudrilus eugeniae). “With the aid of aerobic microorganisms (that is, bacteria and fungi), earthworms digest processed organic materials under favorable temperature and moisture conditions,” Adang explains. “The materials that pass through the digestive tract of the earthworms come out in a texturized, sanitized and deodorized form of castings known as vermicompost.”
MBRLC uses vermicompost as fertilizer for their crops. “While low in major plant nutrients compared to chemical fertilizers,” Adang says, “vermicompost supports microorganisms, which make nutrients more readily available to plants and produce substances that promote plant growth and health.”
The MBRLC also has fishponds, where it raises tilapia. In some parts of the ponds, azolla and golden apple snails are also raised (although not together). Azolla is used as feed for tilapia and ducks. Azolla contains 4-5 percent nitrogen, 1-1.5 percent phosphorus, and 2-3 percent potassium. “As such, azolla can also be applied as organic fertilizer in fresh, dried, or composted form.” As for golden apple snails, they are utilized as feed for ducks.
Aside from the farming technologies it has developed through the years, MBRLC also conducts training on vegetable seed propagation and production (particularly beans, tomatoes, eggplants, sweet pepper, and ampalaya), tilapia and rabbit raising, fruit growing and management (durian, lanzones, mangosteen, and rambutan), and forage growing.
The MBRLC was actually conceptualized based on the masteral thesis of Watson. He found out that most agricultural training centers in the 1960s already had sophisticated facilities but didn’t have demonstration farms where the trainees can immerse themselves.
“In those years, training centers had huge buildings where people could learn modern techniques of farming,” Watson said. “But unfortunately, they didn’t have demo fields that show how to do those techniques.”
At the MBRLC, training is conducted every week for about 30 participants. The trainees don’t learn only the basics of the organic farming systems the center developed but also absorb the skills in doing them. “We call it hands-on-experience,” Adang says. “Only 25% of the training is done in the room, the remaining 75% are finished in the field.”
Even those who come to the center for a tour, they still manage to learn something. “We usually have a short orientation at the training hall,” Adang says. “After that, they can tour around the center, which usually takes about half a day. But in some instances, if farmers have so many questions during the tour, it may take about one day.”
Since its humble beginning in September 1971, the MBRLC has become one of the most-often visited places of Filipinos in Mindanao. People from all over the world – from Australia to Zimbabwe, from Afghanistan to Vietnam, from the United Kingdom to the United States – have also visited the center.
“From an initial effort to train and improve the productivity of farmers in the area, it has spread as a reputable model throughout the Philippines and touched all of Asia,” said Jerry A. Rankin, former president of the International Mission Board based in Richmond, Virginia. “Agricultural technology and methods have turned barren hills into productive farms.”
Indeed, the MBRLC has gone a long, long way. It has survived through the years because the systems it developed are still very much relevant until now. “We want to show to our visitors that farming systems that protect the environment can also be productive and sustainable,” Adang says.
