CANAMAN, Camarines Sur—Darkened palay (unhusked rice) were laid out prominently under the sun after each of the six typhoons that battered this town in 2024.
No rice trader wanted to buy them anymore, according to the farmers. Not even at a low price.
“When a typhoon hits, we barely have any income because our rice yield rots,” farmer Frankie Bolocon said. “Like now, a lot of it has spoiled.”
After storm “Kristine” (internationally, Trami) hit the Bicol Region in mid-October, Bolocon said that more than a hectare’s worth of rice were unfit for consumption in the field where he works.
Another farmer, Evelyn Aguila, 59, was confident that she would achieve a bountiful harvest.
For months, she maintained her crops with modern farming practices and technologies she had freshly acquired through a training she earnestly attended. But then “Kristine” happened.
“Our rice was growing so well, but the flooding [because of the typhoon] spoiled it, so we only harvested seven and a half cavans,” she shared.
A cavan is a unit of measurement for rice that is usually equivalent to about 50 kilograms.
Bolocon’s and Aguilar’s experiences are not new to thousands of Filipino rice farmers.
Intense typhoons disturb the critical stages of rice growth, nullifying three months’ worth of hard work. But this is not their worst nightmare.
Salt on wound
Bolocon and Aguila both attested that aside from the typhoons during the rainy season, one of their strongest dilemmas was the saltwater intrusion into their rice fields during the dry season, which negatively impacts their crops.
“When the rice needs water [during the dry season], we have nowhere to get it from, so our harvest weakens. The rice crop dies when saltwater enters the fields,” Aguila said.
Residents explained that once saline water enters their fields, the leaves turn yellowish. Since they depend on rainfall as their main source of water, they cannot just flush it off their land. This scenario is exacerbated, especially during high tide and the dry season when rain is elusive.
Rudy Nuñez, a barangay (village) councilor and a member of their agricultural committee, said that 75 percent of the rice fields in Canaman town experience saltwater intrusion, negatively impacting their crops.
“If it doesn’t rain for just a month, the Bicol River will already turn salty, and we can’t use it anymore [for our crops]. When the sea is at high tide, the saltwater comes in here, causing the Bicol River to rise. That means we lose our supply of freshwater,” Nuñez said.
According to the International Rice Research Institute’s Knowledge Bank, the Philippines has an estimated coastal saline-prone area of 500,000 to 600,000 hectares, of which 200,000 hectares are considered seriously salt-affected soils.
Evading worst-case scenario
To avoid this, farmers have to meticulously master the art of timing.
“We actually observe proper timing,” Bolocon said. “So when the water is salty, we should not have any crops yet. But if the planting is delayed and the water becomes salty, the crops will be ruined. Just look at other farmers. Once the water becomes salty, no one’s planting anything yet.”
In their village Iquin, Bolocon and other farmers have observed warning signs. The water on the river sparkles and reflects the light from the moon at night when it turns salty.
“But if it is freshwater, it doesn’t shine. Plants living in the water, like water lilies, also die when the water is salty,” he said.
Rainfall data also has to be monitored, and patterns, such as during high tide and low tide, should be properly observed to accurately foresee the right timing for planting.
Nuñez said that during the full moon saltwater enters the farmers’ fields, so they have to wait until the full moon passes
“If high tide coincides with heavy rain, then you’re done,” the village official said.
Saline-resilient rice variety
However, even though this has been their situation since the 1950s, Nuñez, who only started farming in 2018, still pursued rice farming because he witnessed the interventions and solutions being offered to help their community, giving them hope.
Starting in 2022, Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) Bicol expanded its Scaling Integrated Crop Management project for saline sites to the Bicol region through the establishment of a community-based demonstration field.
Through this, the rice farmers learned that using salt-tolerant rice varieties like NSIC Rc480 may help them alleviate the effects of saline intrusion on their crops.
Deo Bonifacio Pestio, a researcher from the Department of Agriculture-PhilRice (DA-PhilRice) Bicol, highlighted that it is important to note that even when using a saline-resilient variety, farmers should not use saltwater to irrigate rice crops.
“The crops will die because they can’t tolerate the salinity. Even if they are a saline-resistant variety, if the salt concentration is too high, no plant will survive. It would still be better if they had a freshwater source to flush out the saltwater that enters their fields,” he explained.
If the level of salinity in the water is measured using an electrical conductivity (EC) meter, a level of 4 to 8 deciSiemens per meter (dS/m) will still be tolerated by the variety, but if it increases to 9 dS/m, the crop will start showing symptoms of stress, including leaves that look burned, rotten, and yellowish.
However, if one uses a normal variety, one that is not saline-tolerant, it will not survive in that kind of environment. It may only survive at a maximum of 2 dS/m. In short, saline-tolerant varieties like NSIC Rc480 have significantly higher tolerance than other varieties.
Aside from this, farmers also learned to use a drum seeder and followed the 40 kg. seeding rate recommendation per hectare.
“I learned not to spray pesticides immediately because some insects are not pests; rather, they are friendly organisms beneficial to our crops,” Aguilar said.
In addition, the training equipped them with a series of lectures, demonstrations, and practical activities based on the PalayCheck, a dynamic rice crop management system that presents the key technology and management practices as Key Checks; compares farmer practices with best practices; and learns from farmers’ discussion groups to sustain improvement in productivity, profitability, and environmental safety.
ICT-based tools on rice, pests and diseases, and salt management for rice production were also conducted through knowledge sharing.
Hard work paid off as Nuñez eventually reaped the fruits of his training when, fortunately, he avoided the impact of “Kristine” by planting unexpectedly earlier and harvesting 108 cavans of palay, higher than the 60 cavans he used to yield.
Moving forward
While other rice farmers in different regions of the Philippines also face the wrath of stronger typhoons, pests, diseases, and rising costs of farming inputs such as fertilizers, farmers in Canaman also have to endure the pain of a saline-prone environment.
Nevertheless, rice farming is a way of life for Bolocon and Aguila, and they will continue to do so, hoping that next cropping season, a bountiful harvest will finally be in their favor.
“We keep going, even if we suffer losses, because it would be a waste not to cultivate the land,” Bolocon said with unwavering hope.
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