A recent “phenomenon” in rice harvesting, they said, hit them worse than the effects of the damage wrought by El Niño in many parts of the country, particularly in Mindanao.
“Hindi po ako nakaparte sa magandang ani na katulad nang nakararaan (I did not share from the bountiful harvest like I used to experience in the past),” Marlon Manale, 36, of Barangay Villa Cuizon, Science City of Muñoz, said. “Pasimula na po ito ng tuluy-tuloy na gawat para sa amin (It is the beginning of our continuing lean months for us),” he added.
He said the “phenomenon” was the proliferation of the “halimaw.” He was referring to the combine harvester employed by the farmers in harvesting their rice crop. The farmers dubbed it as such as this machine does the harvesting, threshing and bagging of the grains in one operation.
Manale said rice harvesting had been his big means of securing cavans of palay for subsistence and daily expenses. He used to take home every harvesting season from 10 to 15 cavans as share for harvesting, he revealed.
In addition, he earns cash money by engaging in “kariada” or hauling of the rice harvest from the farm to the road with the use of a cart pulled by a carabao.
Now, these opportunities for earning were gone.
“Dalawang kabang palay lang po ang naisampa ko sa bahay sa paggapas ng palay sa maputik na lugar. Hindi rin po ako kumita sa kariada na ang bayad ay P12 isang kaban (I was only able to bring home two cavans of palay from harvesting in the muddy field. I did not earn from kariada which pays P12 per cavan),” he said.
Manale’s reduced share in rice harvesting was also experienced by several thousand human harvesters in the province as the combined harvester proliferated. In the city where Manele was staying, 133 combine harvester machines and many more from outside of the province were fielded during the height of the harvest season.
The human harvesters get a share of 7.5 cavans per 100 cavans harvested.
The owners of combine machine harvester charge 12 cavans per 100 bagged harvest. It is much less than the manual harvesting and threshing by small thresher plus the fee for kariada, which total to 15 cavans and P1,200 (for the kariada), were employed.
According to Evelyn Santos, rice program coordinator in the provincial agriculturist’s office, the average yield of the still on-going harvesting in Nueva Ecija is 140 cavans per hectare. More than 1600,000 hectares were planted to rice this cropping season in the province, she said.
Nueva Ecija has been known as the “rice granary of the Philippines” since the 1920s owing to its usual big yearly harvest. According to a study of the Philippine Rice Institute (PhilRice), Nueva Ecija’s average rice yield from 2002 to 2006 was 1,113,284 metric tons with Isabela coming second with 1,006,422 metric tons.
The yearly average harvest in the province has gone up now to more than 1.5 mt due to improved technologies, PhilRice said.
Irrigation
Irrigation water provided by the Pantabangan Dam, communal irrigation systems, and water pumps sustained the needs of the standing rice crop that mitigated the effects of the El Niño event in the province’s farmlands.
Wilfredo Bernardo, a combined machine harvester owner, said the loans provided by the banks and the finances of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) made it easy for many entrepreneurs to acquire the machine. Each of the machine costs from P1.5 million to P1.7 million.
Subtracting the share of the machine crew, that include the operator, bagger, manual harvesters for the left-out palay stalks, and haulers, he nets five cavans per 100 cavans harvest, he said.
The agricultural laborers in the province, which number about 200,000, feared that their other source of income from rice cultivation, which is transplanting, may also be lost as mechanical rice transplanter is now being introduced.
The employment of farm mechanization was promoted by the Department of Agriculture (DA) five years ago “to further increase the productivity and income of small farmers.
Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said then that the Filipino farmers’ use of farm machines lagged behind with their counterparts in the rest of Southeast Asia. He said farmers in other countries use the equivalent of half a horse power in their farm operation whereas the Filipino farmers use only the equivalent of an electric fan.
As farm mechanization is continuously promoted by the DA, the agricultural laborers continue to lament: “Nguni’t paano naman kami? (But how about us?)
