Agricultural land, water, trees, mountains, plants and animals surround most of the childhood life of Mr. Valerio Ramos, 63 years of Poblacion, Bauko, Mountain Province. He grew up in the farmlands of this municipality until college when he took a course in Geodetic Engineering at the Saint Louis University, Baguio City. After graduation, he landed a job as Geodetic Engineer at Itogon Suyoc Mines, Benguet (19681972), Lepanto Mining Corporation, Mankayan, Benguet (1978-1983), Atlas Mining Corporation in Masbate (1986-1989); Gold Fields Philippines, Camarines Norte (1990); Paragon Mines, Camarines Norte (19971998); Lepanto Mining Corporation, Mankayan, Benguet ( 1999-2003) as consultant; He also worked as a private land surveyor for 4 years (1972-1978) and as construction surveyor in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (1983-1986). He retired as a Mining Consultant in Lepanto Mines in 2003.
Mr. Ramos recalls that in one of his surveying activities for the operation of an open pit mining in Paragon Mines, he saw a rare pitcher plant standing alone on top of the hill where he was standing. With this were a few wild geese and other assorted forest cover and wildlife. After only a few weeks, all of these were gone, the mountains and the topsoil were pushed to the sea because of the bulldozing and leveling activities that were being done. Mr. Ramos then thought deeply and said to himself, “the pitcher plant and the wild geese are only a few of the many species that had become extinct because nature was replaced with an industry called mining. While still working for the mining firms, Mr. Ramos pondered deeply about the plight of the pitcher plant, the wild geese, the plants and the wildlife. While the mines provided jobs for many people, it has degraded wildlife and its habitat. It has eventually affected the life of man, animals and marine life too.
One year after his retirement in October 2004, Mr. Ramos and his wife, Lydia, started to develop a modest piece of land about 4,000 square meters in Palina, Taloy Sur, Tuba, Benguet. They bought this property in 2001 as an investment and tried to sell it a year later but there were no buyers. Tired of city life with all the pollution, traffic, noise and crowd, they decided to develop the place into a small farm and retirement home. The farm lot has existing coconut, mango, tamarind and bamboo trees when they bought it but were unattended. Thus, they started clearing the area by removing the weeds, grasses, wild vines, shrubs and bushes. They planted additional fruit trees such as bananas, avocados, atis, guava, guyabano, lemon and papaya. Later, they started building their farmhouse and introduced other developments like terracing the slopes with ripraps, building perimeter fence, and concrete access steps from the road to the property. In February 19, 2005, their 39th wedding anniversary, they moved to their new home and continued developing their farm lot. Other developments introduced were the installation of steel tank and construction of concrete tank for water storage, construction of chicken house, construction of water impounding ponds and installation of pipelines for irrigation.
Finally, he started to develop lowland vegetable and fruit tree gardens by leveling and terracing the area with stone ripraps. The shoulder or outer edge of the sloping portions were terraced with the use of shrubs, nitrogen fixing plants (flamengia, caliandra and rhinzoni) and lemon grass. Lately, he planted pineapple as hedgerows and as cash crop. At the terraced walls, waterways and pathways, he planted Australian peanut and carabao grass as cover crops to control soil erosion. The flat portion of the terraces were planted to string beans.
At the wider and flatter areas of the terraces, he made plots. He separated each plot with the use of cement-clay bricks which he himself makes with minimal cost. The plots were filled with compost which he too produces. His compost is made of shredded grasses, shrubs, plant residues, and twigs gathered in the area and are fermented with the use of effective micro-organisms (EM). The plots are planted to lowland vegetables such as talinum, string beans, okra, eggplant, and kangkong.
He also raises range chicken (Kabir) and lately, he bought one head of goat and is feeding it with legumes, grasses, and nitrogen-fixing plants that he planted on the farm.
This 4,000 square meter lot is now called the V & L Farms (Valerio and Lydia). It is located along the Marcos Highway near the boundary of Benguet and La Union. It is about a 40-minute ride from Baguio City and about 10 minutes to Pugo, La Union. It has an elevation of about 450 meters above sea level, overlooking Lingayen gulf and the lowland municipalities of Pangasinan & La Union. The climate is rather warm.
Mr. Ramos is not a farmer by profession, but he recalls that he was introduced to natural farming methods during his early childhood years in his hometown. They do not use any chemical fertilizers or pesticides in farming at that time. His experiences with the destruction of the natural environment and wildlife during his stint with the mining firms and his awareness of the importance of preserving the same sparked his interest to venture into organic farming. His desire to gain additional skills and knowledge led him to attend training courses, visit other organic farms, talk and exchange information with organic practitioners and agricultural technologists of Tuba. He also joined organizations engaged in organic farming. His visit to the Master’s Garden convinced him further to go into natural farming.
Of all the training courses he attended, he considers the “Farmer-Led Extension Cum Technology Demonstration” sponsored by the Agricultural Training Institute-CAR in May 23-25, 2006, as the one that gave him a strong impact. This is part of the ladderized training program designed to hone and enhance the organic farming skills of LGU selected organic farmer participants. As a farmer extensionist, his farm is now becoming a laboratory for organic farming where farmers, interested groups and individuals come to observe and be trained. His farm was also validated as “organic” by the officers of the La Trinidad Organic Producers Multi-purpose Cooperative (LATOP)Cooperative where he is now an associate member. Other training courses that he attended at ATI-CAR which are also part of the ladderized training program on Organic Faming were: Internal Quality Control System for Organic Vegetables held on October 24-26, 2006 and the Technology Exchange through inter-farm visits among farmer-extensionists held on December 12-14, 2006. In addition to the ATI-CAR sponsored trainings, he also attended the Second Cordillera Organic Agriculture congress in Feb. 15-16, 2007 and other organic farming trainings sponsored by the Department of Agriculture-RFU, Local Government Unit of Tuba, and private entities, namely: Orientation on Organic Agriculture Certification, Crop programming seminar, observation tour to organic farms in Tagaytay and Batangas.
He is an active member of the Good Roots Association, a group working on the multiplication of different forest & fruit bearing trees; and Tuba Organic Farmers Association (TOFA), a group spearheading the organic farming movement in the municipality. He sells his farm produce either on Wednesdays & Saturdays or both at the LATOP’s market outlet located at La Trinidad public market. With the income that he is getting from his farm, he says that he is happy because after all, his effort were not put in vain. Mr. Ramos has recently expanded his organic farming operations by cultivating an adjacent lot owned by his relative.
Finally, Mr. Ramos has this to say, “Organic farming is really a worthy undertaking; you don’t need a wide track of land to operate. Once the soil is grown and the initial farm is fully put in place, input cost is very minimal, only the seeds and labor. But you can also produce your own seeds.” With his experiences and initial successes in organic farming, he hopes to help spread the practice to other farmers and interested individuals so that they will also advocate the safe, environment-friendly and relatively cheap farming system called organic farming. (CCSagudan)
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