“Whether you become a teacher, engineer or lawyer, no matter what profession you attain, when you grow old, you always find your way back to farming.”
- Cadoy Basbanio, a 60-year old banana farmer from Mawab, Davao de Oro
Cadoy Basbanio has seen the good and bad of farming in his community but he refuses to give up hope that organic farming will help improve the life situation of farmers like him.
Cadoy’s parents passed on to him the passion for agriculture. After almost three decades, he admits the path they chose has been a complicated and taxing one.
He recalled his previous experience working for an enterprise that formerly operated in their land. The company rented their farms, paying them a staggering amount of Php 5,000.00 per hectare every year and hired them as laborers.
Cadoy, along with other farmers, worked long hours to tend the banana trees in the plantation for over ten (10) years until the company pulled out and stopped production owing to financial issues. Farmers were suddenly left unemployed.
The Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services (IDEALS) partnered with Cadoy’s cooperative, the Nueva Visayas Agrarian Reform Cooperative (NUVIARCO) to provide legal assistance to farmers. Their lease contract was terminated after.
The farmers still struggled to acquire the necessary resources and knowledge to manage a banana plantation because they used to be employees in a company. They had no choice but to mortgage their land for dismal sums of money for daily basic provisions.
In addition, Cadoy said that the heightened effects of the pandemic made their situation even worse. “The challenges brought by the pandemic were dreadful and we lost our buyers,” he said. “The price (of bananas) per kilo dropped from 11 pesos to 3 pesos because we couldn’t deliver to other places due to restrictions.”
It was the lowest price he’d ever received for his hard-earned crops. These issues were even felt more in their community given how the majority of farmers in Mawab are senior citizens.
He said, “It was risky to leave the house, especially for elderly farmers like me. So I stayed home even if we couldn’t afford it. My son, who is working with the Bureau of Fire Protection, was the one who sustained us.”
The Future is Organic
After consultation meetings and discussions, IDEALS established an organic farming project called Project Grow, with the support of Voice. They also teamed up with Foundation for Agrarian Reform Cooperatives in Mindanao Inc. (FARMCOOP) to empower the farmers in developing their lands to be suitable for production of organic bananas. The project also provides technical support to strengthen their capacity to run their cooperative enterprise.
Cadoy shared, “I learned how to make bio fertilizer, and other technical techniques to grow bananas. It’s better for our health and it’s also better because we can sell it at a higher price in the market.”
Produce can be called organic if it’s certified to have grown on soil that had no synthetic fertilizers and pesticides applied. NUVIARCO will undergo an organic farming certification period starting next year. It will be a rigorous evaluation of their land’s compliance to the environmental and social standards set by their chosen certification organization.
If they succeed, they will receive premium prices for their products, and access fast-growing local, regional, and international markets. This will also enable them to support local economies, access additional funding and technical assistance.
The lives of the farming families in NUVIARCO slowly meet their basic needs such as sufficient meals and education for their children. According to Cadoy, other localities in Mawab are now starting to follow their steps in organic farming after seeing the promising future of organic bananas.
He said, “everything in the community will improve if we practice organic farming, and others are more curious now of what we do. We can further encourage them to join next time because they see us getting buyers.”
Organic farming is definitely more physically and mentally demanding. However, NUVIARCO farmers are striving for it with great hope for the future. They pursue organic farming to grant dignity to the poor farmers in their community.
“It’s good that we have the cooperative because we are not taken lightly in the market. We know we are protected,” he shared.
