During a seminar conducted in Balutakay, Bansalan, Davao del Sur, the invited lecturer – Allan B. Ampoloquio – inquired of the participants regarding the challenges they faced in their slope farms.
Among the issues raised were low productivity, high input costs, difficulties in transporting produce to the market, and the low purchasing price of their goods. However, the predominant complaint was about the hardened soil. “We are experiencing difficulties in tilling our farm now,” one participant remarked.
Ampoloquio explained that the hardening of their lands can be attributed to soil erosion. He explained that the topsoil, which is essential for agriculture due to its fine particles and organic matter, has been removed.
“This results in a layer of larger, coarser sand and silt particles that lack cohesion, leading to the formation of a dense, compacted crust on the surface when it dries,” Ampoloquio elaborated.
Balutakay is a sitio situated in the rolling foothills of Mount Apo, the highest peak in the country. Previously, it was enveloped by forests. As a component of Mount Apo, it has been designated as a natural park (a status conferred by President Manuel L. Quezon in 1966) and a protected area (established by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2004).
During the peak of insurgency in Davao del Sur, Balutakay served as a stronghold for the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. It became a battleground between government forces and insurgents.
But despite this, people seeking improved living conditions encroached upon the region, which is, in fact, an ancestral domain. They commenced agricultural activities, cultivating coffee and bananas. In recent years, they have diversified their crops to include high-value produce such as cabbage, carrots, green onions, potatoes, and sweet peppers.
The population of farmers in the area has continued to grow. Consequently, the trees that once covered Balutakay have been stripped away. As farmers failed to implement soil conservation practices, erosion ensued.
Soil erosion is more pronounced in upland farms. In the Philippine context, the uplands are rolling to steep lands, with slopes ranging upward from 18 percent. About 60 percent of the country’s total land area of 30 million hectares is considered uplands.
“Poorest of the poor, marginalized, illiterate” are some of the terms used to describe upland farmers in the Philippines. But the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC), a non-government organization based in Kinuskusan, Bansalan, Davao del Sur, considered them “neglected.”
As early as 1984, the problems besetting the country’s ecologically-fragile uplands were sounded out by Charles Castro in his position paper, “Uplands and Uplanders: In Search for New Perspective.”
“Even if the Philippine government poured all of its resources, money and talent into expanding the carrying capacity of the lowlands, it would still become all too clear that the next focus for rural development efforts will have to be the uplands,” Castro wrote.
“For it is in the uplands where supplementary and additional food sources will be grown. It is in the uplands where landless rural people will find a new option in fighting rural poverty. It is in the uplands where alternatives for fossil fuel requirements may be produced.”
Many of these uplands are now devoid of vegetation, desolate, and deforested. They have lost their top soil, the primary resource for crop production. “The world cultivates 95% of its food in the uppermost layer of soil, rendering topsoil one of the most crucial elements of our food system,” stated Susan Cosier from The Guardian.
In the humid tropics, starting from a sandy base, a soil can be formed in as little as 200 years. But the process normally takes far longer. Under most conditions, soil is formed at a rate of one centimeter every 100 to 400 years, and it takes 3,000 to 12,000 years to build enough soil to form productive land.
“This means that soil is, in effect, a non-renewable resource,” says the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. “Once destroyed, it is gone forever.”
Although soil erosion does occur naturally, the process is slow. However, man’s intervention has increased the rate of natural erosion. According to David Pimentel, an agricultural ecologist at Cornell University, exposed soil is eroded at several thousand times the natural rate.
Under normal conditions, each hectare of land loses somewhere between 0.004 and 0.05 tons of soil to erosion each year – far less than what is replaced by natural soil building processes.
On average, agricultural lands lose 2.5 centimeters of topsoil every 16 years, which is 17 times faster than it can be replaced. Unfortunately, it appears that this significant loss is largely overlooked. The government, for instance, seems to be more concerned about the shortage of rice for the populace than the depletion of topsoil.
Soil erosion is the most prevalent natural process that shapes landscapes. Over millennia, erosion gradually wears down mountains and redistributes soil to create plains, plateaus, valleys, river flats, and deltas. This phenomenon is referred to as natural erosion.
When erosion occurs at a pace that surpasses the rate of natural erosion, it is termed accelerated erosion. This type of erosion can be triggered by specific human land use practices. For soil to erode, a combination of two elements is necessary: loose soil and a physical force capable of moving the soil to a different location.
Soil particles may be detached from a stream bank during high water. Detached soil particles are then transported to a new location by some physical force, including water, wind, ice, or gravity. On forested lands, this force is flowing water.
“No other soil phenomenon is more destructive worldwide than soil erosion,” wrote Nyle C. Brady in his book, The Nature and Properties of Soils. “It involves losing water and plant nutrients at rates far higher than those occurring through leaching.
“More tragically, however, (soil erosion) can result in the loss of the entire soil,” Brady continued. “Furthermore, the soil that is removed finds its way into streams, rivers, and lakes and becomes a pollution problem there.”
The FAO says the world is now losing an equivalent of five to seven million hectares of farmland through erosion each year. This is equivalent to the land area of the Netherlands and Belgium combined.
“If we continue to degrade the soil at the rate we are now, the world could run out of topsoil in about 60 years,” deplored FAO’s Maria-Helena Semedo. “Without topsoil, the earth’s ability to filter water, absorb carbon, and feed people plunges.”
“Soil erosion is an enemy to any nation – far worse than any outside enemy coming into a country conquering it because it is an enemy you cannot see vividly,” declares Harold R. Watson, former director of MBRLC and recipient of the 1985 Ramon Magsaysay Award for peace and international understanding. “It’s a slow creeping enemy that soon possesses the land.”
When topsoil is eroded, farm production suffers. That was what authors Lester R. Brown and Edward C. Wolf expounded in their collaborative book, Soil Erosion: Quiet Crisis in the World Economy, published by Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute.
According to the two authors, the loss of topsoil affects the ability to grow food in two ways. For one, soil erosion reduces the inherent productivity of land, both through the loss of nutrients and degradation of the physical structure.
For another, soil erosion increases the costs of food production. If you’re at loss how this happens, the two authors elaborate: “When farmers lose topsoil, they may increase land productivity by substituting energy in the form of fertilizer.
“Hence, farmers losing topsoil may experience either a loss in land productivity or a rise in costs of agricultural inputs. And if the productivity drops too low or agricultural costs rise too high, farmers are forced to abandon their land.” (To be concluded)
