CABANATUAN CITY – The rice harvest was good and the relatively high farm gate price of the palay harvest, which manifested starting last year, continued to be good, too.
They were reason enough for land owners and even tenants to be joyful. But not for the thousands of farm laborers who failed to share in the bounties of rice farming in Nueva Ecija.
“Gawat po nitong nakaraang anihan (We have nothing this last cropping season), Marlon Manale, 36, of Villa Cuizon, Science City of Muñoz, said.
“Inagawan po kami ng mga halimaw sa aming dating knikita (The beasts robbed us of the opportunity to get our usual earnings),” he added.
He was referring to the mechanical rice harvester, called combine harvester, which did the reaping, threshing and bagging of the rice harvest in many rice farms in the prov-ince. Manale said that he was only able to get three cavans as share for harvesting in the rice lands whose owners did not employ the use of mechanical harvester.
He said he used to take home every harvesting season from 10 to 15 cavans as share for harvesting. Manale’s reduced share in rice harvesting was also experienced by several thousand human harvesters in the province as hundreds of combine harvesters took he job of rice harvesting.
Some of the mechanical harvesters came from Isabela province where there is now a proliferation of this machine. Each harvester costs about P1.3 million. It can finish reaping, threshing and bagging of the harvest in one hectare in less than a day.
The fee is 12 cavans for every 100 cavans harvested. The human harvesters’ share for the reaping and bundling of the harvest is 7.5 cavans per hundred and for threshing, another 7.5 cavans per hundred.
“Naging malungkot po ang Pasko para sa amin ngayon (Christmas was not merry for us this time),” Manale said. Although land cultivations and transplanting jobs are now happening for the dry season cropping, many laborers said the opportunity for them to earn much is also bleak.
The area to be cultivated for rice cropping in Nueva Ecija this season has been reduced by 30 percent due to the low level of irrigation water at Pantabangan Dam. Nueva Ecija, considered the premier rice-producing province in the country, accounts for at least 200,000 farm laborers.
They find income by plowing the field, pulling the seedlings, transplanting, weeding, fixing embankments, harvesting, serving as crew of mini-threshers, for “karyada” or hauling of the harvest, and for hauling and drying of the harvest on pavements.
