Oxfam’s Philippines programme. Such trips follow a pretty standard format – our national staff and relevant partners
[caption id="attachment_11815" align="alignright" width="300" caption="with the moringa farmers"][/caption]
whisk me through a series of site visits and conversations with farmers, civil society organizations, local government officials and anyone else who’ll talk to you. For a few days, I’m engrossed, wrestling on multiple levels, first to understand the intricacies of the projects, and then to try and get at the meta-questions: what are the strengths and weaknesses in our work? What could we be doing better? Is there a clear power analysis and theory of change? Discussions continue in vehicles to and from the visits, over dinner and (sometimes) in the bar, as everyone grapples with the incredibly difficult business of ‘doing development’. It’s intense and definitely the best bit of the job.
I went to Mindanao, one of the poorest and most conflict-ridden islands in the Philippines archipelago, and home to 23m of its 94m population. The focus was our livelihoods work (I hate the term, but can’t think of anything better to describe the complex ways poor people find to put food on the family table). Such work forms the backbone of many of Oxfam’s programmes. In Mindanao, we’re working with women farmers to introduce new crops or upgrade existing ones:
Crop 1: Moringa – a magical tree whose fruit is x7 more rich in Vitamin C than oranges, has x4 more calcium than milk, and x3 more vitamin E than Spinach. The leaves can be made into a herbal coffee or poultry feed. The plant has medicinal properties – arthritis, blood pressure etc. It’s also a good crop for women farmers – easy to plant and harvest (those I talked to had an average of over 4 kids each). The problem for local partner AADC is linking up moringa producers in the idyllic forested mountains of northern Mindanao with the market chains that can deliver reliable customers and improved prices. Possibilities include a herbal remedy exporter to the US and a Philippines health food producer, but for the moment, the main customer is a poultry feed company.
Crop 2: Rubber. Not a new crop, but one which was previously produced on a plantation model, and then replaced by oil palm. Now small farmers are picking it up, but with low grade seeds and poor quality control, and at the mercy of buyers who advance them credit and then force them to accept rock bottom prices. Our partners there are developing a big seedling nursery and bringing in new ideas on climate change adaptation (a real issue here – for example, the project encourages farmers to plant ground cover crops like legumes to retain moisture, as climate change is producing months without rain where previously the two settings for the weather were ‘wet’ and ‘very wet’.)
Crop 3: Abaca: a traditional crop, and relative of the banana. The fibrous bark is stripped and woven into a hard wearing rope. It’s also used in paper manufacture (hence the ‘manila envelope’ – 85% of world production comes from the Philippines). The issue here is how to add value, find better markets and develop women’s participation – Oxfam identified Abaca through a feasibility study as one of the crops with best potential for women farmers in this area (Agusan del Sur).
