Reflections on a Community Visit to Polonuling

In July 2025, three volunteers from Lunas joined partner organization MASIPAG Mindanao for Farmers’ Field Day in Polonuling, Mindanao. Below are reflections from one of our volunteers.

MASIPAG stands for Magsasaka at Siyentipiko para sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura, or “Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Agricultural Development.” This organization, with over 30 years of experience, has reached more than 38,000 farmers and preserved over 2000 rice varieties, including traditional, organic, and climate-resilient ones. These varieties are maintained and propagated through a network of backup farms and community trial farms.

An example of MASIPAG’s support for farmers is Farmers’ Field Day, an event to selectively harvest and gather data about the rice varieties that farmers had planted on their community trial farm, while also celebrating the months of work they had invested. Four farmers associations came together for Farmers’ Field Day: SWISA, Mt. Matutum Farmers’ Association, Polonuling Farmers’ Association, and Polonuling Seeds Association. These farmer-led associations are also known as Peoples’ Organizations (POs).

Field Notes

Mid-morning on a sunny, cloudless day, about thirty of us – farmers, scientists, students, and international volunteers – march single file on the banks of a rice field, with sickles, clipboards, and pens in tow. We’re here for a special occasion: it’s Farmer’s Field Day, the culmination of five months of observation of 17 varieties of organic rice to see which of these varieties have done the best in the field conditions. This community trial farm is hosted on Kuya Jon’s land in Polonuling, South Cotabato. In the spirit of bayanihan, people have gathered from all corners of the barangay (neighborhood) to help.

We’re grouped together and each group is responsible for harvesting three bundles of three types of rice. For each bundle we measure the height of the plant, the panicle length, the number of productive tillers, and how many grains per panicle. Myself and the other Lunas volunteers are split up and  grouped with farmers. I’m not used to field conditions and keep slipping on the bank of the rice field, squinting in the bright morning light, while the farmers are gracefully harvesting the rice bundles. Kuya Boni calls out the number of productive tillers and I record it dutifully on the half sheet of paper given to us. Then, we bring the bunches into the shade and count every grain of rice on each live panicle – 150, 200, 250 grains. Each panicle should have over 100 grains to be considered productive. They’ll choose the top 10 varieties, and then distribute seeds to farmers to plant at scale. Later, Kuya Johnny says they'll have a rice tasting contest in the barangay. They’ll see which variety tastes the best.

At lunchtime, plates of purple native rice, vegetables, and adobong baboy are brought out. The farmers talk about how you can really tell when the rice is organic by the taste. They share tips on organic fertilizers they’re using, how the chickens are doing with the new feed, the contract growing scheme that one of them got tricked into; the chatter is in Bisaya, Ilonggo, and a bit of English. At the end of the day, we all reflect on how harvesting rice by hand made us grateful for every single grain of rice that we ate.

Historical Context

MASIPAG was started in the 1980s as a farmer-led movement in search of traditional rice seeds to safeguard genetic diversity. But in order to truly understand the importance of MASIPAG’s work – and the significance of Farmers Field Day – we have to dive into its historical context, in particular, the history of monocropping, GMOs, and corporate control over agriculture in the Philippines.

Land is life. Indigenous people and farmers know  this. All we have comes from the earth, and the earth shares it freely, asking only for care in return. It is the historical injustices that have broken our relationship with the earth.

In the Philippines, historical injustice can be traced through colonization. With Spanish colonization, beginning in 1565, land that was once owned and farmed collectively became property of the Spanish Crown, first as encomiendas. Then as Spain weakened globally, it instituted haciendas in the Philippines – vast tracts of land dedicated to export crops like sugarcane, tobacco, abaca, rather than for feeding the local population. The expansion of haciendas also left many farmers landless. Haciendas were the first instances of monocropping in the Philippines, and so monocropping, extractivism, and landlessness go hand-in-hand when talking about Filipino land.

American colonization in 1898 only deepened and institutionalized this crisis. For example, from 1898 – 1940, Hacienda Luisita alone – a 16,000 acres or 25 square mile tract of land – provided 20% of America’s sugar consumption. Meanwhile, the Luzon and Visayas region faced uprisings of landless farmers who had had enough of their conditions. To quell the uprisings, then-president Manuel Quezon promised free land in Mindanao, and settlers came in droves acting as footsoldiers for landgrabbing corporations and wealthy individuals. Now, some of the largest landholders in Mindanao include Dole (35433 Ha / 87,557 Acres), Sumifru (12,300 Ha / 30,394 Acres) and San Miguel Corporation (19,000 Ha / 46,950 Acres).

The extraction of Filipino resources continued even after the Philippines gained independence on paper. We could cite numerous examples, but the most relevant expression of this is the Green Revolution. 

The Green Revolution

The Green Revolution began in the 1960s as a push by corporate agriculture and their scientists, promising high-yielding varieties to combat hunger in the Global South. Military surplus was repackaged into pesticides. Urea, a key component of nitrogen-based bombs, was turned into a farm input. DDT/Agent Orange, a defoliant infamous for its use in the US war of aggression against Vietnam, was developed into an herbicide. Cooperative agencies were established in the Global South pushing this intensive, chemical based farming.

The Green Revolution entered the Philippines through the Masagana 99 Program instituted in the 1970s. Masagana means “bountiful,” and 99 represents the promise of 99 sacks of rice per hectare. Farmers received free seeds and started planting. What farmers didn’t realize is that in order to reach those high yields, they also needed a lot more chemical pesticides and fertilizers. These inputs increased the acidity of the soil, making it hard to grow anything else besides those crops. It destroyed local flora and fauna, poisoned streams, and poisoned farmers themselves. In order to afford the inputs, farmers took on more and more debt, and became bankrupt or lost their land in years where there were bad harvests. Farmers lost control of their land as they lost control of their seeds and production inputs. Traditional seeds were lost and conventional seeds that replaced them were weak and susceptible to disease.

Today, most farmers in the Philippines who till the land have no real control over what they plant. 7 out of 10 farmers in the Philippines are landless. Wealthy landowners and agricultural corporations decide on behalf of farmers to monocrop GMO, chemical-intensive varieties in order to turn a profit. For example, it’s common that in coconut farming, the landowner gets 60% of the profits, while the tenant gets 40% of the profits and has to pay for all the inputs. In some places that proportion is 70% profits to the landowner, 30% to the tenant. Seeds and inputs are owned by giants like Bayer/Monsanto and Syngenta.

To make things worse, climate change exacerbates an already untenable situation. Droughts, floods, and supertyphoons destroy entire harvests and push farmers deeper into debt or bankruptcy.

MASIPAG in Action 

If privatization & chemical dependency are the illness, collective ownership and seed sovereignty are the medicine. Through farmer leadership and support from scientists and NGOs, MASIPAG advocates for sustainable agriculture and stands with farmers in their calls for genuine agrarian reform. Their four campaigns center around countering corporate control over agriculture, promoting organic farming, implementing climate resiliency strategies and advocating for civil and political rights. 

With MASIPAG’s help, farmers conduct community-led experiments on the effects of conventional agriculture in their communities. In one locale, a Peoples’ Organization compared erosion in a trial site where conventional agriculture was used with a trial site where organic agriculture was used. The farmers took measurements every week for 6 months. In the end, the results were clear: erosion in the conventional agriculture site was much more than in the organic site. The evidence strengthened farmers’ commitment to carrying on their trial organic farm site.

Support Seed Sovereignty in Mindanao

Farmers are also asserting seed sovereignty through community-based seed management. Across the 511 Peoples Organizations within MASIPAG are 188 trial farms like the one on Kuya Johnny’s land, which maintain a minimum of 50 traditional rice varieties. Through collective management, seedbanking, seed sharing, and knowledge exchange, farmers are continuing to keep alive the traditional and organic practices. Through the collective efforts of MASIPAG’s network, including farmer-led breeding and traditional variety recovery, over 89 varieties with climate and pest resistance have been identified.

Landgrabbing and high rents are still a reality, however, and small farmers are often displaced, making trial farms hosted on farmers' land unstable. In order to ensure continuing seed sovereignty, MASIPAG is looking to found a well-irrigated Regional farm in Mindanao. This farm would host lowland varieties and serve as a means to continue seed sovereignty efforts nationwide, and would be the first ever seed bank in Mindanao. By supporting MASIPAG’s Mindanao Trial Farm, you also support a growing and dynamic seed commons. You can make a one time donation via our paypal or venmo.

“No one owns the land

No one owns the oceans

No one owns the sand

These are given by our Mother

Our planet provides for free

Only in the hands of the greedy

Does the Earth require a fee”

Poem from a MASIPAG Forum