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Monday, January 19, 2009
The logging operation also brought migrants from Leyte, Zamboanga and the neighboring towns. The denuded forests were further cleared for homes and made into farmlands. The Kaingin was practiced by farmers, and mono and non-synchronized cropping worsened soil erosion and incidence of pest and rat infestation on crops.
Land conflicts between the B'laan and Christians occurred and were settled only in 1988. The NPA and the MILF groups also occasionally pass through Palo 19 but there were no reported conflicts with them.
The village has poor roads that it is better to ride a horse or walk. There are no post harvest facilities, electricity, and health center--- only basic services are provided by the town’s personnel and some volunteers. There is a high school and an elementary school. The main water sources for the 260 households are undeveloped and unprotected springs.
After the logging, farming also became a very unprofitable enterprise. Middlemen provided trading, marketing, and credit services, including cash advances and loans to be charged against harvestable crops. The farmers have very little to do with their harvest. Selling prices for crops were mainly determined by the middlemen.
Fastforward…
Fortunately, the UDP selected Palo 19 as its first cover in Tampakan. It has assisted the village in formulating their community watershed plan, training farmers on sustainable and environment sensitive farming methods, provided farm to market roads, and helped in marketing and developing their enterprises.
Today, the village was significantly organized into an upland barangay association. It’s primarily purpose is to enter into a community-based forest management agreement with the DENR and secure land tenure for the farmers.
The Bagsakan center was broached to pave the trading of village’s major crops. The activity renewed interest in the communal efforts towards development. The center was intended as consolidating station for buyers and farmers to do business. Realizing that there was a big market for peanuts, the village went into peanut farming. However, the concept that the center would act as a consolidator of products did not happen, and actual operations were limited to peanut buying and storage.
Missteps…
In 2002, the association partnered with the Mindanao Peanut Industry that pitched them to a buyer in Manila city, who required 10 tons per shipment, at P50.00 per kilo. However, the venture resulted into a huge loss due to rat infestation. Also the unsynchronized planting and harvesting of farmers nailed them to meet the required volume. Helpless, the center then sold the peanuts to buyers within the town at less than their buying price.
The damage caused by rat infestation, the lack of capital, and lack of organizational skills to manage a communal enterprise, and other issues related to finance and operations, led to the closure of the Bagsakan at the same year.
Revival…
In 2004, the UDP engaged a consultancy firm, to implement business development services to Palo 19. The officers signified their interest in reviving the operations of the Bagsakan.
The association opted to convert itself into a coop to manage the trading business, and provide its members with dividends, patronage refund and other benefits. It would adopt a structure more appropriate to managing business, and guided by a business plan and operations manual. The coop is now trading banana, gabi, ginger and tomatoes based on the community’s production capabilities in relation to the current market demands. These crops are from the farmers, and sold to markets in Koronadal, Surallah, and General Santos.
The UDP funded and introduced diversified farming, to help sustain the trading enterprise and the production of the priority crops, to farmers.
Significantly, the association believe in focusing to stay committed, and united, as a way to address their day-to-day struggles, considering that up to now, the services rendered to the coop are still voluntary with doubts and intrigues destructing the initial operations of the enterprise.
In the shadows of development…
Upo is one of the 19 barangays some eight kilometers away from the town center in Maitum. It has a population of 1,640 and mostly T’boli, where only 43% are literate. It has 2,430 hectares of moderate slopes and rolling hills. This village was marginalized because of limited use of its land for agriculture. The village elders describe the barangay during the early 90’s as very bare. It was one of the poorest barangays of the town in a survey conducted by the local government. This situation was worsened by the armed conflict between the government forces and the MNLF in 1999 that greatly affected the village.Sunday, January 18, 2009
Paving the way to prosperity…
One passes through San Roque plying the national highway from New Bataan to the next town of Compostela Valley. It is one of the 17 barangays in the town of New Bataan, and three kilometers from the center accessible by passenger buses, motorcycles, and multi-cabs. In San Roque, one finds the Mapaso, a village at the foot of the mountain; and going up was to cross the river through a hanging bridge.
The area is widely planted to coconut with mostly banana (Cardava) as intercrop. Two springs development projects were constructed by the province and funded by CRS for them to avail of potable water. The village farmers are mono-cropping, slash-and-burn the slopes and planting with corn--denuding the uplands in the way. San Roque has an estimated area of 10,000 hectares considering the irregular terrain of the barangay. Its residents are from Bohol, Cebu, and Leyte, and other places of the country.
Cardava trading…
The Mapaso Small Banana Farmers Cooperative is the only banana trading business in the area. The Coop also provides its members lending and health care.The coop started Cardaba trading in year 2000 to offer equitable prices to banana farmers. Three years after, the coop realized the need to directly link with banana chip processors. It was at this time that the UDP provided assistance in establishing the direct link with the Commodities Corporation (ELCOCO). The company enabled the cooperative to increase its canvassed volume of Cardava from an average of five tons per month to ten tons per month for two years. The coop plans to expand their banana trading to four other nearby villages hoping to generate more jobs in the next three years. From banana dicing, it plans to engage in actual trading of Cardava. However, in most case traders back out from buying their banana, the coop suffers the ‘pain’ and ‘loss’ of looking for other buyers for Cardava, that are left along the streets for pick-up. It teaches them realities of business, as well as, planning ahead for problems they would face in the future.
The surfacing of big markets for Cardava ushered in by the banana chips industry has dash hope for the coop. With the town’s campaign for Cardava production and the mayor’s aggressive promotion in planting 10 hectares of land per village with Cardava, the coop’s goal is more doable now. The coop also provides cash advances to both member and non Cardava growers since 2001 as subsistence money in between harvests. It also set-up a fund for hospitalization, also known as the ‘emergency fund’, seeing the difficulty of its members (excluding non-member) to look for funds to pay their medical expenses in times of need.
From a few hundred pesos working capital in 2001, this gradually increased to about P12, 000.00 pesos in June 2004. As of now, the coop treats cash advances as short-term loans with an interest of 2% per month and a 3% service on a pre-paid basis. The coop’s finances show an improving performance with assets increasing from P9, 396.00 in 2002 to P9, 487.00 in 2003. Assets continue to increase by about 50% from 2004 to present. Aside from this, the coop has no external liabilities except that of the dividends and patronage refunds payable to its members.
