By: Glo Abaeo Tuazon
Email: twilight_glo@yahoo.com

THE FRESH, green fields are slowly coming to life wherever one goes in the agricultural areas. After the daunting months of drought the El Nino phenomenon brought, the farmers are happy again that the rains finally fell on the parched lands. Better late than never, they say amidst the growing anticipation of cropping the fields. The lands that the drought left has grown barren for awhile, with luck and constant rains they will regain fertility and bear the grains of life again.

Rice is considered a staple food among Filipinos. Like most Asian countries we thrive on rice as something as basic as water and light. It is actually the grains that comes second in rank according to production. Like the Philippines , other Asian countries as well as the Latin Americas and Africa , study says that this crop is most suited for countries with low labor cost as it is very labor intensive. It also requires a lot of water supply, reason why most fields has to have manmade irrigation systems in the absense of natural water sources or natural rainfall. The parent specie of the rice plants originated in South Asia and parts of Africa but centuries of trade and commerce thru exportation has made it available in other countries and cultures too.

In the Philippines rice is very important. Rice may be tasteless without anything else but without it too, sustenance seem incomplete. In the words of some, “take everything off the table except the rice and we can do with just salt and water to survive”. Life is simple in the Mountain Province , the people are mostly content to have what they have. The sophistication is confined in the rituals and other traditions that they keep sacred. As is most of the sacred rituals they perform are connected to the rice cycle, proof of the importance of the grains to these people.

So today the they celebrate the coming of the rain, for it meant the production of rice crops. In the Mountain Province they usually cultivate the fields twice a year. Some opt to do it once to let the land breath and be given time to regain nutrients. The tactic is to crop it with something else, vegetables or tubers or most likely the legumes that the Mountain Province is known for. This is being practiced more these days, a way of going back to the basics after realizing the hazards of fertilizers and pesticides. It never hurt out forefathers then, what difference should it make now? So some process the old rice straws and bury them in the muddy grounds, to rot and feed the next crops.

In a few months the fields hopefully will be swelling with gold, the stalks heavy with grains ready for harvest. The bounty is precious, as precious as life itself. The rice stalks would then be bundled and taken to threshers and processed to roughly separate the grains from the straws.

The straws would serve a different purpose. But the grains would be hulled to further separate the rice from the chaff, that produces a product called brown rice. Futher processed gives white rice. These would feed the family for a few months. Those who were able to produce more would take the excess to market and sell it for other necessities. Hopefully now that the fields are green, the rain would pour in calculated measures to sustain the crops. The people of the Mountain Province nod in thankful prayers to The God.