MANILA, Philippines — It has been a year and four months since typhoons Karen (Sarika) and Lawin (Haima) slammed Aurora province in October 2016. Both at signal No. 3 and just days apart, the typhoons left much destruction in Aurora, with Karen’s center hitting the municipality of Baler.
While Baler is known for the wild waves of the Pacific Ocean that attract surfers and beach enthusiasts, it is also a municipality with farms planted to rice, corn, onion and vegetables. Farmers here are usually the first to suffer the ill-effects of strong typhoons that hit the province. Karen and Lawin caused flood everywhere, power loss, fallen trees and toppled and useless crops, thus the loss of livelihood of many dismayed farmers.
But the all-women association in Barangay Reserva called Rural Improvement Club (RIC) headed by Mary Deiwey, refused to succumb to dismay. Its members, mostly seniors originally from Mountain Province, never lost hope and instead started to put up home-based backyard and communal vegetable gardens through the project of the Department of Agriculture (DA) – Region 3 and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Through the project “Typhoon Sarika and Haima Response in Region 3,” the RIC of Reserva and six other barangays in Baler received free typhoon-resilient vegetable seeds, farm tools, training on various sustainable agriculture systems, and close regular technical assistance from field technicians of the Municipal Agriculture Office and the DA R3 Office.
The gardens boosted the mothers’ morale as these augmented the income of rice-farming husbands.
“Growing vegetables right in our own backyards provides for our daily viands. It saves us from spending and travelling to the market,” one of the mothers said during the field exposure of some youth brought by the non-government organization Yakap Kalikasan Tungo sa Kaunlaran ng Pilipinas Inc. from Laguna.
Another said, “All plants are naturally grown. We don’t use chemicals and inorganic fertilizers and pesticides. The soil is rich and harvests are healthy, safe to eat, taste really more delicious, and talong pa lang, ulam na (eggplant alone can be a viand).”
Because of the variety of vegetables, harvests in bulk from the individual backyard gardens and the communal garden are sold in nearby markets.
Their life remains simple, but the gardens help them save and earn more money for children’s schooling, medicine for sick family members, and improvement of their houses. Earnings from communal harvests become savings of the organization.
For these women, the best way to bounce back from disasters is to have patience, perseverance, discipline, industriousness, unity in groups and good partnership with supportive institutions. - Aura Marie Cueto and Hans Matthew Formanes Paciano Rizal Elementary School, Los Ba?os, Laguna