From PinoyPress.net
PALAWAN, Philippines — Northern Palawan farmers whose only source of income was slash-and-burn agriculture that nets them 10 cavans of rice for each hectare annually now have a new livelihood, thanks to a non-government organization (NGO) led by a UP Los Banos graduate who never thought he would stay for keeps in the country’s last frontier.
Change dawned upon eight communities in 2001, when farmers shifted from swidden agriculture and dabbled in a new technology— drying herbs and transforming them into powder for medical preparations.
They no longer burn cogon and other weeds to pave the way for the cultivation of palay, which nets them P300 per cavan, or a measly P3,000 from 10 cavans harvested from their kaingin every year. A farmer with a family of six members has to burn at least 5 hectares of land to produce between 50 cavans and 55 cavans of palay annually.
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