Who says planting rice is never fun?

MANILA, Philippines - Who was the culprit in the “wrong” translation of the original Tagalog song on rice planting, titled “Magtanim Ay Di Biro,” an English version of which is “Planting Rice is Never Fun?”

This question was raised by Isaac Kliatchko Jr., former assistant provincial editor of a morning daily, who said “the song had been produced, and recorded, and even taught to all the batches of young students while they were still young, for as long as anyone can remember.”

“Its meaning – that planting rice is never fun – has been accepted, not just through the years, but through the decades, and even up to another century, and its English meaning – that is glaringly distorted – has been deeply ingrained in the Filipino culture.”

Kliatchko said in agriculture or farming,  “fun” “is experienced and expressed in the grains, or returns of income, and of profit derived from the mix of hard work, skills, and technology in the planting of rice.”

“Which is why work is enjoyed,” he said.

“But if by planting rice, throughout his lifetime, a farmer becomes even poorer, that his sons and daughters look for other means of livelihood, and even despise farming and none of his children had decided to follow his father’s and ancestor’s footsteps, planting rice – here in the Philippines – is indeed the work of the lowly farmer, and would never, never be fun,” he said.

He said the measures and interventions that the Department of Agriculture (DA) is carrying out in the nation’s drive to intensify rice production must include “a redirection of concepts and values on the planting of rice.”

It is ironical, he said, that for an agricultural country like the Philippines, farming, particularly rice farming, has been regarded “as the occupation mostly of the poor.”

Unlike in other countries, he said,  such as in Australia , France, the United States, and now in China, Thailand, and Vietnam, “farming is a rich man’s  occupation.”