Cordillera heirloom rice wows US gourmets

Since 2006, gourmet restaurants in the US have been serving Cordillera native heirloom rice—and their customers are asking for more.

Exported by Rice, Inc. and marketed by Eighth Wonder Inc., Kalinga and Ifugao farmers expect to sell up to 20 metric tons of four rice varieties this year to the specialty food market in the US, almost three-fold the seven metric tons they sold last year.

Available for sale in 15 states in the US and in Canada, are Tinawon Fancy, a slight pink or brown staple noted for its taste and texture, mild aroma and fast cooking qualities; Tinawon White, an exceptional white staple variety that is wonderfully aromatic while cooking, but with a mild eating flavor; Kalinga Unoy, which has a rare delectable taste and aroma always served during festivals to please the Kalinga god Kabunyan; and Ulikan Red, a unique, long grain rice that cooks out thicker and somewhat stickier than conventional long grain, has an earthy aroma when cooking, but a mild eating taste and nice after taste.

Almost a thousand farmers, who belong to 13 municipalities and 60 villages that dot the Cordillera mountain range, are members of the Rice Terraces Farmers’ Cooperative. They hand-pound the newly harvested rice while 61 village quality control inspectors trained by Rice oversee the processing to a uniform export quality standard, under the Cordillera Heirloom Rice Project (CHRP).

Due to the intensive post-harvest labor required including hauling, cleaning, threshing, and packaging in completely biodegradable imported plastic packs, farm-gate prices of heirloom rice varieties sold to Eighth Wonder reach P50 per kilo. They retail for $4.69 to $6.59 per pound at independent US grocery stores and cooperatives.

Vicky Garcia, executive director of Rice Inc., says the CHRP has given hope to the impoverished communities who till the Banaue Rice Terraces. “Ifugao families are being torn apart by out-migration. 30 percent of their 15-28 year olds go to the Middle East as construction workers or domestic helpers because they have lost hope in their land. But with the project, their parents—most of our farmers are very old women—are now opening bank accounts in the rural banks to get their fair share in the export sales of heirloom rice. There is a renewed hope in the viability of farming, and in the sustainability indigenous resources in the Cordilleras,” she says.

Rice, a non-profit organization, is focused on making traditional rice varieties—the crop that every high-elevation farmer grows—a source of economic opportunity. It envisions the indigenous cultures of the northern Cordillera flourishing economically, culturally and in harmony with the natural environment of the revitalized rice terraces.

“Our mission is to help preserve heirloom rice and the culture of community rice production that surrounds it. We want to empower indigenous peoples to use their traditional knowledge and expertise in the development of sustainable and culturally appropriate economic enterprises,” says Garcia. In short, Rice aims to “Revitalize Indigenous Cordilleran Entrepreneurs.”

Eighth Wonder, which imports heirloom rice into the US and markets it under the Eighth Wonder brand, supports traditional terrace farming as a viable livelihood. It helps to maintain historic high-elevation terraces and ecosystems and to keep rare heirloom rice varieties in commercial production.

Eighth Wonder was founded by Mary Hensley, a former US Peace Corps volunteer in Kalinga. The framework for Eighth Wonder is that of a socially responsible, shared-equity business, the feasibility for which Hensley prepared as part of her class on Social Entrepreneurship at the School for International Training in Vermont, US.

From that business feasibility study, the project has grown into an effort to establish a regional economic development, now known as the CHRP, in partnership with Rice and Garcia, who finished her Master of Arts in the same Vermont school as Hensley.

Ambassador Preciosa S. Soliven, Secretary General of the UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines, recently handed over a donation of P100,000 to Rice on behalf of her high school students at O.B. Montessori Center Inc., for the purchase of appropriate equipment for milling the rice.

“These are special milling machines that will allow the rice to keep its skin after processing, just as if they were hand-pounded. But they will not be able to meet their order for 20 metric tons if they rely solely on the mortar-and-pestle for milling,” says Soliven.