Agriculture: The Good Earth And The Bad

MANILA: Global warming. Look at the image above; this is the Bad Earth. You and I feel the heat, and you can't help it. The rice farmers feel the devastating effects of the drought, and they think they can't help it. They can, but they don't know how – nobody is teaching them. Not the Department of Agriculture (DA). Well, I don’t know why the DA isn't teaching the farmers what can be done to make a Good Earth. To make a Bad Earth like that, it's easy: just neglect it. (Image from Keith Bacongco, 08 April 2016, ucanews.com)

The clue is this: It's May, and in the Philippines we expect the rains this month. And when the rain comes, we must harvest the rainwater. Then we will see the Good Earth.

Not today. It's too late for the crop that could have been harvested this month or last. Because the farmers whom we failed to teach did not anticipate the devastating effect of the drought. On record, as early as May 2014, the weather bureau Pagasa warned of the coming of El Niño into the country and, on 11 March 2015, it announced that El Niño was already here (Gwen De La Cruz, 08 November 2014, updated 11 March 2015, "How El Niño could affect the Philippines in 2015," Rappler, rappler.com/). Ms Gwen said, "Early warning is critical as (it) helps the public prepare ahead for El Niño's impact."

And the public officials did not warn us to prepare ahead for El Niño's impact, or did not tell us how, or both. And privately we did not mind.

If knowledge is power, then the farmers were denied that power because they were not told how to prepare.

What triggered this essay was that via email, the latest news I got from ICRISAT Happenings is this: "Call to strengthen partnerships in (drought-hit) Zimbabwe to benefit smallholder farmers" (29 April 2016 issue, downloadable as pdf). When I read the news item, it said ICRISAT was preparing to help the people in Zimbabwe to respond to the drought intelligently. You have to prepare.

Back to the Philippines. We have been warned. On 26 May 2015, almost 1 year ago, 8 provinces in the Philippines were declared under a state of calamity due to drought (Shirley Escalante, ABC News abc.net.au). Another warning in the same year: "Thousands of farmers around the Philippines will see their yearly income slashed as the drought could affect up to 32 provinces in the country, particularly around the northern farmland areas" (Aya Lowe, 12 September 2015, "Filipino farmers bear the brunt of El Niño drought," Channel NewsAsia, channelnewsasia.com). Ms Aya says the DA had in fact created an El Niño Task Force (ENTF) back in 2014, who "encouraged the farmers to switch to crops that require less water, but rice farmers are still having a hard time." The ENTF meant the planting of drought-resistant crops or varieties. PhilRice had them; IRRI had them, no problem. The advice of the ENTF was good but not good enough.

The problem is this; note what Ms Aya says: "But rice farmers are still having a hard time." She doesn't explain it, but as a son of a farmer and as an agriculturist, I know: The rice farmers want their fields flooded so that they can plow and puddle the soil. No flood, no puddling. Puddling is an ancient technique that should have gone the way of the dodo. When you puddle, you destroy the structure of the soil. You also waste labor and time – puddling is an inherited cultivation practice that is entirely unnecessary.

Considering El Niño, there are many water-saving technologies for rice production in the Asian Region (Romeo Cabangon et al, undated, agnet.org). These techniques include: straw mulching, shallow dry tillage or "crack plowing," direct-seeding (no transplanting), and aerobic rice system (non-puddled, non-saturated). Cabangon & Co did not discuss much and did not combine, but since I know, I will:

Straw mulching is laying of rice straw all over the field. Shallow dry tillage is plowing the soil that has little or no moisture in a shallow manner, cultivator blades cutting not deeper than 3 inches. Now, if you combine straw mulching with shallow dry tillage, you will have an organic mulch all over your field, which will decompose and produce humus, the part of organic matter that holds water and nutrients. Humus can hold up to 20 times its own weight in water.

The Good Earth. It's the mulching that is the key, not the straw; I mean, you can use other organic materials for the surface mulch: leaves, crop residue, weeds. To work the mulch in, you have to do shallow dry tillage as I have just described. To simplify, let me call the combined process here mulch tillage.

Look at the photograph again, closely now. You will note that there are greenish parts of the landscape; it's not all dry and cracked soil. If you don't recognize the greenish items, look to the right, at the carabao grazing – of course it is grazing grass, whatever there is. This growing grass shows that there is moisture in that soil that looks parched and shows large cracks. Imagine this field during the rainy season, months before this. There must have been plenty of water. What did the farmer do to conserve the water? Nothing.

Forewarned is forearmed – but you have to take action. If you don't, your field will end up looking like the image above.

El Niño is not going away. It peaked between December 2015 and February 2016, and drought affected 40% of the country and in fact is expected to persist this year (ACAPS, 13 April 2016, acaps.org). What are you going to do about it?

You have to prepare for the drought before it happens. And this month of May, the beginning of the rainy season, is the best time to prepare for the dry season, the months of drought that are sure to follow after the rains stop. If you want a Good Earth, you must prepare before the Bad Earth appears.

"Knowledge is power," Francis Bacon said in 1597. A teacher, I used to agree with that, but not anymore. I can deny you knowledge, so that knowledge cannot empower you. Rather, "Access is power," I say. If I have access to knowledge even if I don't know anything before, I am empowered.

So, to be empowered to mitigate the effects of the next dry months, as a farmer, you have to practice mulch tillage. You can also turn your green manuring into mulch tillage; simply run your cultivator (rotavator) over the green manure crop until it is well-mixed with the top soil. That will be the Good Earth.

If you capture the rainwater via the Good Earth, your field will be moist enough for the next dry cropping season, the Bad Earth.

You cannot stop the drought, but you can prepare for your crops to beat it via the Good Earth. Just do it! Now!