“In-inut, in-inut, ada ka nga loan ditoy, loan ijay.” (Slowly and gradually at times you incur loans everywhere.) This was the simple and usual answer of Eliza Sevilleja when she is teased regarding her land holdings. Job Sevileja and Eliza Sevilleja, owners of the J&E Farm are now retired teachers enjoying their life as both retirees and farmers at the same time. Yet things did not come easy for their family, as the couple shared memories and life lessons throughout the years juggling their teaching career, family, and farming. Mrs. Sevilleja shared “I was born in Isabela but after finishing college I saw no opportunity of getting employment there, so I came here and true enough I got employed in one of the nearby schools. Life then was nothing else but difficult because we were starting on our own and after all those years there is only one thing that I can be sure of and that is, perseverance made us survive.”
Through a vivid recollection of her memories, she gives a detailed tour of what the municipality of Alfonso Lista in the Province of Ifugao, then known as the town of Potia, back in the 1960s when she first came to the place. “Back then there was only one vehicle going out of town. It starts it route early in the morning at barangay Sta. Maria, the town center, to San Mateo, Isabela which is the nearest trading place in the area. The same vehicle would ferry commuters back here in Alfonso Lista in the afternoon of the same day so if you missed the trip you will have to wait for the next day or walk all the way from Isabela to wherever you are going here in Alfonso Lista.”
Mrs. Sevilleja also recalled how road access and transportation network in the area was then compared to what is at present. Alfonso Lista is now a crossroads of road networks linking the Cordillera Administrative Region and the Cagayan Valley. It is considered as the eastern gateway of the Province of Ifugao and the Cordillera Region. This present picture however, according to Mrs. Sevilleja, is a very recent development as she painted a very different road access situation in the 60’s and 70’s. “It will take you at most a day to travel from here in Alfonso Lista to San Mateo in Isabela but now that is shortened into just 30 minutes at most” she recalled.
She also narrated how rice production was back then. “There was no irrigation yet, so we plant and harvest rice in a very limited volume and whatever we harvest we have to make do with it until the next harvest time.” She then remarked “that is how difficult life was back then and take note both of us were employed as public-school teachers, but our salary was not enough. Honestly, it was so little that we have to augment that with farming but at least we have our salary, and we did not need to worry about where to get our rice supply because it is coming from our own farm. However, imagine those families who at that time have no other source of livelihood but farming, that is how the world was in the 60’s and 70’s.
According to Mrs. Sevilleja, things begin to significantly improve in Alfonso Lista when the Magat dam became operational. Records of the National Irrigation Administration-Magat River Integrated Irrigation System (NIA-MARIIS) show that the Magat dam was constructed in 1978 and officially started its operations in 1983.
Mrs. Sevilleja then continued sharing how they actually started acquiring their rice farms in Alfonso Lista. “People needing money came to us, relatives, neighbors, friends, acquaintances. Back then there were no banks or cooperatives here or nearby where you can run to and borrow money, so we ended up borrowing from each other. Sometimes people will come and borrow money and will later offer their rice fields as payment.” She laughed as she shared that “maybe people at that time think we have a lot of money because we are schoolteachers.” The retired schoolteacher smiled as she reminisced those days, “the truth is we were all just the same, trying to make ends meet, our only difference is that since we are schoolteachers, we were able to avail of loans for government employees. So, what we did was to avail of loans and then lend the proceeds to the people borrowing money from us. That is how we started, that practice is actually the origin of what you know as loan-doners, people who are dependent on loans.”
Mrs. Sevilleja then gave an advice when it comes to loan, she said “there is nothing wrong with loans, especially for us people who have no other recourse but to borrow money. The important thing is whatever we loaned we should not waste it, instead we have to invest it and there are many ways of doing that, what we found to be most beneficial for us at that time is to use it in acquiring rice farms.”
Things became more challenging, Mrs. Sevilleja recalls, as her children are growing, they went to school particularly when they were in college. “I got two sons, one went to study engineering, the other to medical school, just imagine how much money that requires and if we only relied to our salary then we could not have sent the to school at all. It is the combination of our earnings from our salary, from farming, and my children’s diligence that got them to where they are now.” Content and happy as a retired teacher and full-time farmer, the Sevilleja couple are proud that out of their perseverance their children are now professionals, one a civil engineer with his own construction firm while the other is a successful medical doctor.
Yet the couple did not put their rice production skills to retirement. Mr. Job Sevilleja shares “I admit that getting old will limit the farming activities which I can do, but that does not mean I will just sit and let the day pass. I still do my daily morning rounds around the farm, and this is what I usually advocate to my fellow farmers because regular and daily farm inspection is the key to a good harvest. You do not plant rice, leave it as is and the later expect it to give you a bountiful harvest.”
In fact, the implementation of the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RECF) gave them the opportunity to, as the couple term it, “share their farm life story.” “We are teachers and for a very long time it has been our life not just our livelihood so naturally when we were given the chance to teach, this time rice production to our fellow farmers, we did not hesitate to grab that chance” explained Mr. Sevilleja when asked how they became a learning site for agriculture (LSA).
The couple also shared their thoughts on the future of agriculture. Mr. Sevilleja noted “well there are indeed a lot of problems, challenges in the agriculture sector but if people will just talk and complain about these problems without getting their hands muddy then the problems will remain and grow even more complicated. Our problems in agriculture are very complicated, just look at the rice industry, but that does not mean we should just give up. While it is true that our problems in the sector are so many, there are also many things we can do in agriculture. It may take us longer, just what we did in our family one step at a time, one parcel at a time but in the end, we will achieve something. So, my take is while we do the talking, I mean the promotion, advocacy, raising awareness of the concerns of the agriculture sector we must also do the planting, that is, the actual involvement, most especially, in the production aspect. Again, there are many ways of doing that, it does not mean that you have to own large areas of farmlands as we can, and will always be best to, start small, may be slowly but at least surely.”
Mrs. Sevilleja added that “the youth are also increasingly becoming aware of concerns in agriculture, and we have to take advantage of that. Here in the farm, we involve a lot of young people in the learning process so that they can learn from their old folks, and also from modern farming. That is, for me, the best contribution which we the elder generation can do to assure that the next generations will be able to feed themselves.”
Story by:
