EDITORIAL — Save this national treasure

Planting rice can be backbreaking work, and the labor must be worth it. The modest returns from traditional rice farming have deterred the children of many farmers from following in their parents’ footsteps.

This problem is sharper in challenging terrain, such as terraced rice paddies. For many years now, the Ifugao rice terraces have faced the threat of neglect as younger generations of farming families pursue careers or livelihoods outside agriculture.

Assistance in producing, packaging and marketing high-value, special mountain rice varieties can stem this exodus of young farmers. Other countries have succeeded in selling such specialized rice varieties, boosting their farmers’ income and ensuring the viability of the farms. Some effort has been made along this line in Ifugao, but there’s a wide room for improvement. 

Mud walls of the terraced paddies have also been eroded by giant earthworms in previous years. Climate change and earthquakes have dried out streams and altered water distribution systems that are critical for the heavy irrigation needed for rice farming.

Estimated to be 2,000 years old, the Rice Terraces of the Cordilleras were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a “living cultural landscape” in 1995. At one point, neglect and unregulated development placed the site on the list of endangered heritage areas, but restoration efforts backed by the international community led to the removal from the list in 2012.

Some months ago, disaster struck one of the five UNESCO-inscribed clusters: the terraces of Batad in the town of Banaue.

The village that sits at the base of the semi-circular, amphitheater-like rice terraces of Batad is one of the top tourist destinations in Ifugao. But in November last year, Super Typhoon Uwan triggered a landslide that killed two people and destroyed one of the centuries-old canals in Batad, devastating an estimated two hectares of rice paddies.

Some 150 farmers were hit by what residents reportedly described as the worst disaster to hit their community in recent memory. 

The Ifugao provincial government has been appealing for aid from the national government to repair the damaged terraces. With the onset of the typhoon season, residents are worried that the damage to the terraces could worsen.

About P30 million is needed to rehabilitate the damaged sections, according to the provincial government. That’s a small price to pay for saving a national treasure, before more damage is done.