She and her husband, who works as a laborer at the College of Fisheries of the Mariano Marcos State University, started to cultivate their farm of five hectares (ha) in 1980 to augment the latter’s low salary from government. The farm consists of 4 ha rainfed and 1 ha upland. Thanks to her father, she learned the rudiments of farming even at an early age when she and her siblings were obliged to help in the farm.

Their farm is located along the coast of the China Sea and, hence, its sandy loam soil has low water retention capacity, making the yield of wet season rice very low. The farm used to be almost unproductive during the dry season because of the lack of irrigation water.

Cita, mother of four children, mentioned her rice yield from 4 ha of rainfed farm was not even enough to feed her family for one year. The low yield, of course, was caused by a host of factors. For one thing, there was lack of technology as she hardly had any interaction with government agricultural technologists before she met the PhilRice researchers. In addition, she hardly attended any training program or technology briefing, as she did not know about any that was being conducted elsewhere. She also lacked capital for farm inputs.

After the wet season rice then, she would plant some vegetables but that was only for family consumption and nothing more.

Comes PhilRice

IT WAS IN THE DRY SEASON of 2001 when Cita had her initial contact with PhilRice Batac researchers who were then looking for cooperators whom they wanted to plant glutinous white corn. She volunteered immediately, as she saw it as a chance to learn new technologies.

At the start, Cita said, the PhilRice researchers did not appear keen in enlisting her cooperation probably because she is a woman. The PhilRice researchers told her they already had cooperators in Paoay, the town north of Currimao and west of Batac, Ilocos Norte, where the PhilRice branch station is located. They left without a sign of hope for her. However, they went back to her because her farm is a contiguous area located along the national highway and, hence, easily accessible.

She did not expect her cooperation with PhilRice to last for quite some time, but three years have passed and she is still linked with PhilRice in the implementation of its projects. At the start, she helped

Cita Allado: A bountiful harvest. (MA Solsoloy)

the PhilRice researchers in convincing other farmers in the community to become her fellow farmer-partners. To get their cooperation, they were offered fertilizer loans and technical assistance.

Her first crop as a PhilRice farmer-partner was nothing but glutinous white corn, which she planted in 1,000 sq m. She harvested it as green and grain corn. She sold the green corn as boiled corn and the grains to cornik, or chichacorn, makers. However, she does not remember anymore how much she got from the crop, as she was not yet keen in recording her activities and outputs.

Of all the crops, why should PhilRice be promoting glutinous corn when its commodity is rice? one may ask. The answer is very simple. They wanted to find if it could be profitably integrated in the community as one of the crops in rice-based farming systems in adverse environments in Ilocos Norte.

In the following wet season of 2001, Cita started to plant different rice varieties like the PJ [PhilRice-JICA] lines (like PJ7, PJ3-1, PJ3-5, PJ(G)6, and PJ(T)4), PSB Rc64, PSB Rc72H, and PSB Rc80. Although the soil of her farm is sandy loam and irrigation water is pumped from a shallow tubewell, her harvest was good because the weather was cooperative throughout the season. For instance, she harvested 5,617 kilogams a hectare (kg/ha) from PSB Rc72H, or Mestizo 1.

Except Mestizo 1, whose seeds could not be used profitably for another crop, she sold most of her rice harvest as seeds to farmers who were brought by PhilRice to see her rice crops during a field day organized for them. The visiting farmers were so impressed on the stand of her crops and so they immediately placed their orders for the seeds. At the highest, she sold the seeds at P25 a kilogram.

She also planted the upland area with mungbean and cowpea, 5,000 sq m each, that season. In addition, she planted 1,000 sq m at the higher portion of the rainfed area with other vegetables. Much to her delight, she sold her cowpea harvest for a total of P48,087. The mungbean seeds also gave her P7,678.

In the dry seasons that followed, she has been planting a host of crops after the wet season rice. These included garlic, onion, corn, mungbean, watermelon, eggplant, okra, sweet pepper, ampalaya, and tomato.

Cita has learned to use early maturing mungbean varieties, like Pag-asa 7 and PSB Mg2, which she relays with corn as a third crop. She also relays garlic and tomato with corn. For the dry season crops, she follows zero tillage and the use of rice straw mulch, thereby reducing her labor cost. In separate parcels, however, she also planted monocultures of corn and mungbean in one season to determine for herself the more profitable method.

To optimize income from her farm, she even plants the levees with poled beans, cowpea, mungbean, and papaya, which she said provide additional income as well as vegetable for her family.

She revealed, however, that crop production during the dry season was made possible by water impounded in a 400 sq m small farm reservoir (SFR) that PhilRice constructed at the middle of the farm in June 2001 primarily as a source of supplementary water during the wet season. The SFR is also being stocked with tilapia during the rainy season.

Other Changes

CITA NOW ALSO PRODUCES compost from the organic biomass (rice straw, corn stubbles, chicken, pig and goat manure), which she uses for her crops, most especially the dry season crops.

She used to burn every organic biomass to make her surroundings appear clean, as her house is located at one side of the farm. Now she has realized that all those farm refuse are very valuable and could be used as fertilizer to produce higher yield.

Through the help of PhilRice, she has also learned to produce carbonized rice hull (CRH), which she uses in the rice seedbed to facilitate easier pulling of seedlings. She also incorporates CRH in her upland farm to increase its water retention capacity, resulting in higher vegetable yields.

True enough, the organic matter content of her farm has increased due to the incorporation of processed chicken manure (PCM), which she did at the start, and compost lately, as shown by results of soil analysis.

Cita confessed, however, that even as she uses PCM and compost, she still applies inorganic fertilizer, as these are not enough to provide all the nutrients needed by her crops at the right amount. Last year, in addition to five bags PCM a hectare, she also applied 150 kg urea and 250 kg complete fertilizer (14-14-14). This year she applied the same amount of inorganic fertilizers with seven bags compost to a hectare.

Animal production has also been integrated into the farm. At the time of our visit, she had five swine fatteners, two cattle fatteners, female cattle, and three does of native goat, two of which were pregnant. Most of the time, like most farmers in the Ilocos region, she follows the cut-and-carry system of feeding, as there is not much uncultivated space in the farm and nearby areas where she could tether her cattle and goats. Sometimes she tethers the animals in a very limited space, but she follows this practice only when grasses are abundant during the rainy season, which is actually four months a year. Even during the rainy season, she tethers the animals only occasionally.

Unlike before when she hardly weeded her crops, Cita already refuses to see weeds growing with her plants. She would stay until 11 o’clock in the morning in the farm, most of the time without taking her snacks even as her house is within the farm. She gathers the weeds and gives them as feed to her goats and cattle. So here is a case where even the weeds become a valuable resource in the farm.

Likewise, she now keeps on attending farmers’ congresses, trainings and seminars, as Currimao Mayor Rosario Go loves to send her to those learning venues courtesy of the local government unit.

More importantly, Cita has become recognized as a farmer-leader. With the guidance of PhilRice researchers in 2003, she led other PhilRice farmer-partners in Currimao in conducting classes for farmers from other barangays. She said farmers who passed by her farm and those of other cooperators usually inquired for information on what they were doing.

Thus, they put up a farmers field school, which they called Palayaralan, even as they had no training facility to go by. At the start, classes were held even under the trees for as long as it was not raining. Soon a training shed was constructed at the middle of Cita’s farm, thanks to the support of PhilRice, the municipal agriculture office (which farmers still call DA or Department of Agriculture), and the local government unit of Currimao. Cita and her husband provided most of the construction materials, as they were in the process of building a new house.

Palayaralan started with 15 participants, mostly from Brgy. Pias Norte where Cita resides. However, the number increased eventually when farmers from neighboring barangays heard that in the training prog-ram, farmers were teaching their fellow farmers. The PhilRice farmer-partners talked about the new practices they adopted, their experiences with the new technology, and the results they obtained. Thus, they were seen by their trainees as credible sources of information. The training program was conducted for one whole season and 30 made it until graduation day.

Cita’s transformation has not gone unnoticed, unrecognized, and unrewarded. In 2001 PhilRice already selected her as an outstanding farmer during a farmers’ congress at PhilRice Batac. The following year she was singled out during another farmers’ congress as the best farmer leader and she also won the best research award given by PhilRice Batac to its farmer-partners that year.

In addition, she won four Pinaka awards during the Currimao town fiesta in 2003 – pinakamalaking (the biggest) upo or white gourd, corn, and watermelon, as well as pinakamasarap (most excellent taste) for her cooked rice of the variety MS6.

Above all, Cita has become recognized by her peers as a leader, which shows that the ability of women in farming must never be underestimated. Despite the agro-ecological condition of her farm, she was able to transform it to a veritable farm that easily serves as a model in increasing the productivity of farms in adverse environments.