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Published on February 11, 2008

Children splash in waterways, herons glide overhead and the paddy fields stretch to the distant hills like a luxuriant green carpet.

In fact, the fields of Lasangan are greener than most. And for that, 28-year-old farmer Rasid Naim - and the organic concoctions he has pioneered - can claim much of the credit.

One such potion is called organic herbal nutrient, a tangy mixture of garlic, ginger, turmeric and vinegar. It's a triple-action pesticide, herbicide and fungicide.

The original recipe called for beer and gin, clear no-nos for a Muslim community. So Rasid experimented. "We tried coconut juice and vinegar, and it worked," he says with a grin.

As well as adapting recipes, Rasid has proved the organic approach not only provides a cleaner, more cost-effective alternative to synthetic products, but has the potential to be a panacea for the host of problems bedevilling the Moro people, the majority in this deceptively idyllic corner of the archipelago.

Shaken by decades of conflict, the Moro are now struggling against a bug that is devastating rice crops. Desperate attempts to deal with it only stoke a dependence on conventional synthetic pesticides and fertilisers, which in turn pollute the land and water, take a toll on farmers' health and lock communities into a crippling spiral of debt.

Some 20 kilometres from Lasangan, farmer Kupi Kalido tells a story familiar across central Mindanao. "Since 2001, all our harvests have failed," says the 50 year-old whose deeply lined face speaks as much of stress as it does of a lifetime working the land. "We've had to live on root crops."

Kupi trudges to his rice field to identify the culprit: small, black bugs. The creatures have already sucked the life out of the stalks, and their sticky excretions have burnt the ears of grain to withered husks. It is harvest time but this crop is not worth saving.

"Before the bugs we got 120 sacks of rice a hectare. Now we can hardly get 40. Sometimes it's as little as 20," explains Kupi.

The Malaysian black bug arrived on the shores of the Philippines from Borneo in the late 1970s. It is only in the past decade that it has established itself here in central Mindanao, but its rise has been relentless and increasingly destructive.

"Black bugs are the No-1 problem here," says Ziga Kali, administrator for General Salipada K Pendatun municipality, where the organic project, supported by Britain's Oxfam, is being piloted. "They have driven many families into poverty. They attack everything except fruit trees - even vegetables."

While the infestation is widespread in the Philippines, it is the Moro who are least equipped to deal it. Techniques that have proved effective - light traps, leaving fields fallow, and increased irrigation - require resources few Moro farmers possess.

A minority numbering some four million, the Moro have long been the worst off of the country's rural poor, despite ancestral claims to its most bountiful land, rich in soil and minerals alike.

Over the past century, land grabs by the elite, multinationals or poor Christian farmers from elsewhere have shunted the Moro on to what is now a fragment of their former home. In the early 1970s, frustration boiled over into an armed separatist struggle that has simmered ever since.

Without the resources for a long-term bug solution, farmers often resort to a quick, synthetic fix paid for with credit from agricultural traders.

Traders prove as voracious as the bugs. They lend fertilisers, pesticides and capital and take repayment in rice, but at prices well below the market rate, and with exorbitant monthly interest. Failure to make repayments means confiscation of land until they can, leaving farmers without a means of income.

The organic approach offers no miracle cure. Rasid admits harvests are smaller than those produced with synthetic inputs, although in time organic fertilisers will replenish the soil rather than deplete it, thus gradually upping yields.

Nor is it a quick fix for the black-bug problem. It does not kill the bugs - it merely drives them away - and heavily infested fields must be sprayed at least once a week. But, crucially, it can be produced by farmers from home-grown ingredients and carries none of the litany of health problems - skin conditions and lung and liver complaints to name a few - that farmers blame on the synthetic alternatives.

"The important thing is the participation of the farmer," says Francis Morales, co-founder of the Metsa Foundation, the group that supplies the organic recipes to Lasangan. "It can't be too expensive for the farmer, it's got to be easy to make and use and experiment with."

Two years ago, Rasid was one of only two farmers in Lasangan in the Oxfam project producing his own fertilisers and pesticides. With the savings he made, he has been able to pay off his debts and buy an extra plot of land.

Twenty farmers have now followed his example. The project grabbed the attention of farmers further afield, as well as the local government, which is setting up an organic cooperative.

But an organic future is far from assured. Government funding is slim and influential people favour the agricultural status quo.

"Several municipalities support organic farming but it is not being supported at provincial and national levels," says Jeremy Inocian, operations manager of an Oxfam programme on Mindanao.

"Philippine suppliers of chemical fertilisers and pesticides are dominated by transnational corporations that constitute a powerful lobby groups," says Jeremy Inocian.

For Rasid, the organic approach has been a successful one. "Organic farming has a future," he says. But, without funds, it is a future that could elude many of his debt-laden colleagues.

Tom Greenwood

Special to The Nation