A Clear and Present Danger: Climate Change and Disrupted Lives

February 07, 2022 by Joan Oñate Narciso

When we were younger, I remember our parents telling us not to bathe in the first rain of the rainy season, for the simple reason that the first rain would be polluted. Back then, summer was strictly from January to June, and rainy season was from July to December. Even the sky, the clouds, and the weather respected this. Summer meant mangoes and month-long school breaks, whilst the rainy season meant the coming of typhoons and the start of school. I remember that the Philippines once had an alphabetical list of female names to call the annual typhoons: Auring (from Aurora), Juaning (from Juana), Rosing (from Rosa)... According to practice, the names for particularly destructive and deadly typhoons were retired from use to prevent psychological trauma for typhoon survivors. As the years passed, however, the delineation between summer and rainy season became more obscure. Typhoons started appearing even during the summer months, and places and regions in the Philippines where the annual typhoons did not normally visit, such as in the Southern Philippines, were now not spared from the brunt of the annual typhoons. What is worse, the annual typhoons became stronger, much stronger. And more destructive. The culprit? Climate change.

Indigenous Farming Practices in the Philippines: Old Ways of Doing, New Ways of Thinking for our Food Systems

Philippines

August 26, 2021 by Joan Oñate Narciso

Indigenous farming practices are local knowledge developed in a community that accumulated from farmers’ experiences and practices through time. No communities practice exactly the same farming strategies because indigenous knowledge arose from a community’s unique history of survival. Before modern agriculture, early farmers adopted practices they learnt from doing farming themselves. Some of these techniques, such as pruning of grapes, became the foundation of modern agricultural technologies. One of the reasons for their adoption in modern agriculture is that these approaches can be explained by science. Pruning, for example, helps balance the partitioning of photosynthates between the vine and the fruits, reducing the number of fruiting sites and the size of the vegetative system, and resulting in bigger clusters. Sustainable farming technologies derived from indigenous knowledge can provide solutions to the challenges of our modern food systems; however, scientific explanations behind these practices are often lacking, which limits their widespread use. A few indigenous farming practices from the Philippines are presented in this blog article, including an attempt to provide scientific explanations behind these approaches.

Food Safety and Shelf Life Training: Empowering Farmers to Develop their Products

Cebu, Philippines

August 04, 2021 by Joan Oñate Narciso

It was a warm bright Sunday when kabog millet farmers in Cebu gathered to eagerly learn about food safety and shelf life analysis. The event was organised by the Communities for Alternative Food Ecosystems Initiative (CAFEi) (through Ms. Teresa D. Ruelas) and the lecture modules were prepared by Ms. Krysthal Vasallo, a food science and agribusiness consultant, who also conducted the workshop. In total, there were 18 farmers, more than half of them were women. Most of the farmers who attended the lectures are between 46 and 60 years old, while only two participants are younger than 30 years old. This could reflect a lack of engagement in farming among young people. Perhaps, expanding the work beyond farming of kabog millet grains to include value-adding food processing and cooking of kabog will increase the interest among the younger generation to work with their elders on growing kabog millet farming into a vibrant industry.

Voices from the Field: Kabog Millet Farmers in the Philippines Envision the Future Post-COVID-19

Cebu, Central Visayas, Philippines

August 25, 2020 by Joan Oñate Narciso

Cebu, Philippines –The Philippines has a rich biodiversity and many native plant species are consumed as staple foods. An example of an ancient Philippine crop is the kabog millet, which is cultivated in Cebu. Kabog millet was a native cereal staple food of the Cebuanos long before the Spanish colonizers came to the Philippines. It is used to make budbud kabog, a yellow-colored tube-cake wrapped in banana leaves. Kabog gets its name from folklore: a farmer once discovered millet grains scattered on a cave floor. The cave bats (kabog, in the local language) used the millet as food. Thinking that the seeds were edible, he experimented cooking with it by pounding the millet seeds and added sugar, creating a delicious dish. It became the prototype for budbud kabog, a popular delicacy that Cebuanos are excited to bring home for their families to enjoy. We interviewed two kabog millet farmers in Cebu, Mr. Nolito Ares (or Tatay Noli as he is fondly called – “Tatay” translates to “Father” in some Philippine languages) and Mr. Simeon Aringay, about kabog millet cultivation and what they envision for kabog millet after COVID-19.

Planting seeds of hope in face of a pandemic

Cebu, Central Visayas, Philippines

May 29, 2020 by Joan Oñate Narciso

Cebu is an island province in Central Visayas and one of the most developed provinces of the Philippines. It has a rich and colorful past. The famed Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, on his quest to reach the Spice Islands, docked in Cebu in 1521. Long before the Spaniards arrived, Cebu was already inhabited by people who engaged in trade with other Asian civilizations in what are now known as China, Japan, India, Burma, and Malaysia; hence, the island became known as “Cebu” from the old Cebuano word “Sibu”, which means “trade”. Such is the proud history of Cebu, where I am taking you now, to introduce you to an initiative that aims to feed communities in a sustainable way.