Rice Terraces of the Philippines

RICE TERRACES OF THE PHILIPPINES

EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD

Did you know that you can support the livelihood of traditional farmers, save a UNESCO site, and contribute to your family’s health just by buying a bag of rice? 

I will be the first to admit that I am guilty of compartmentalizing my lifestyle.  It’s easy to do.  Most of us who have grown up in the first world are so far removed from the sources that enable us to live……the food we eat, the water we drink, the clothes we wear.  We just go to the store and make our choices, often never thinking of the consequences, positive or negative, of our purchases.  Life is really easier that way.  However, the effects of global warming, the global food and fuel shortage, and globalization in general has made it more and more difficult for us to bury our collective heads in the sand.  So it was with great reluctance, though a sense of relief to finally address the issue, that I lifted one eye out of the proverbial sand and began to take stock of how my personal lifestyle effects the rest of the world.  Beginning with…….

 

The food we eat……

 

A regular visit to the Organic Market on Sunday has become my current source of healthier food:  fresh baked bread, vegetables and fruits from Bagio and Tagutay.  I don’t know about you, but I love rice.  So when I discovered organic rice grown on the Philippine rice terraces at the market, it was a no-brainer.   After a few weeks of enjoying this wonderful product, curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to do a little research on the rice and the terraces.  And as is often the case, I got more than I bargained for.

 

History of the Terraces

 

The terraces of Ifugao Province in northern Luzon are estimated to be at least 2,000 years old.  Declared a UNESCO Heritage site in 1995, these high rice fields follow the contours of the mountains and express a perfect harmony between humans and nature.  Over many centuries, withstanding the threats of colonization, the Ifugao people have maintained their traditions through oral history and myth.  According to local elders, Bugan and Wigan were the first Ifugao, and God gave them rice.  He also gave them the means to grow rice in the harsh mountainsides, the terraces.   Evidence suggests that the Miao people from China may be responsible for the  architectural technology of terracing mountainsides  when they settled in the Cordillera Mountains.   An oppressive Emperor’s regime drove the Miao from central China higher and higher into the mountains.  Eventually, the diaspora spread the Miao groups to various regions including the land of Mu, what we now know as the Philippines.  Clearly, evidence of Chinese influence is in the faces of the mountain people, called Igorots by the colonialists, as well as the rituals, traditions, and dress.  

 

Terraces, or hillside development, is present in 6 provinces of northern Luzon.  The terraces have been manually carved out of the mountains and are held together by stone walls. Mountain springs feed the beds by a fairly elaborate irrigation system.  Clean water emerges from deep inside the mountain and is distributed to the paddies by canal system. Although the springs are often small, they provide sufficient water to most of the terraces.  An aerial image is reminiscent of a stairway leading to the heavens.  If connected end to end, the length of all the terraces would be ten times longer than the Great Wall of China! 

 

Symbiosis and personal choices

 

So what does all of this history have to do with the rice we eat today?   After thousands of years cultivating native rice, the people and the rice terraces are at risk of becoming redundant.   Young people are being drawn to the cities rather than farming and the rice terraces are crumbling due to lack of care.  Futile efforts have been made to uplift the condition of the local economy, but really what works best is what has worked for thousands of years.  Growing rice and vegetables and fish in the terraced paddies.

 

Enter Mara Pardo de Tavera, a self taught agriculturalist.   In an effort to secure the Philippine heirloom rice for her own family, Mara began to support a village, Chananaw, in Kalinga about 5 years ago by encouraging them to grow rice in the traditional methods.  The rice is sold at Rustan’s and Sunday’s Legapsi Organic Market, also a brainchild of Mara’s.  (Fourteen years ago, Mara created the first organic market in the Philippines and in Asia, itself.) Ironically, although the Kalinga people are very proud and protective of their native rice, they themselves cannot afford to eat it.  It is more profitable for them to sell their harvest and then buy the cheaper imported rice to eat, saving their heirloom rice for special cermonies.  Over the last several decades, the native peoples of the rice terraces have had to sell most of their heritage, their beads (they now wear plastic), their wooden artifacts, their weavings.  The one constant that has remained is the rice and the terraces, but without a market for the rice, it is also in danger of disappearing.  

 

 If you are accustomed to white rice and haven’t acquired a taste for the red or brown rices, try going to M Cafe at the Ayala Museum.  Order the Sagada Mountain Rice dish and you will be hooked!  Better still, buy the Terraces Rice and make your own.  This is my interpretation of M Cafe’s recipe.

 

Saute a small chopped onion, 2 cloves garlic, 1/2 c. chopped carrots, 1 c. pea pods, 1/4 c. chopped walnuts in 1+ Tbsp butter and 1+ Tbsp olive oil.  After a few minutes, add 2 cups organic red rice, cooked.  Then add 2 or 3 tbsp oyster sauce to taste, salt and pepper.  Delicious!  (Check label that oyster sauce does not contain MSG.  Use organic when possible!)

 

We are becoming more aware that the choices we make have an impact in the global arena.  Mara likens buying consumer products to voting.  She says, “When you buy a product, you are voting for that product.   When you buy rice from the terraces, you are not only voting for a healthy organic product, but you are voting for the sustainability of a culture. “