By Wilhelmina S. Orozco
Is it development when huge tracts of land which should have been sources of food crops are converted into golf courses? Is it development when no alternative jobs await farmers and farmworkers and the land they till for decades of years are removed from their control?
Unfortunately the conversion of agricultural lands has not stopped despite all the reasons that have been put up by environmentalists and the social scientists who favor agricultural development over industrialization. The worst case I have seen is that of the conversion of rolling agricultural lands into a golf course up there in Forest Hills Antipolo, Rizal.
Passing eras
Sad, sad, sad. I could not ease the heaviness on my chest as I saw hectares and hectares of land which probably a year or two before used to be immersed in water to make the rice seedlings grow during this rainy season. Then I remembered the roads of Bulacan way back in the 60’s with its sidewalks full of vendors selling green ripe mangoes along roads from Marilao up to the last town going to Nueva Ecija from where my Mother hailed. Now the vendors are gone and must have shifted their businesses in the towns and cities to sell – of all things - cigarettes and candies instead.
An era is passing by or must have passed by already. New communities will be rising from those lands now, to be peopled by professionals, traders, students, and even the families of overseas Filipino workers as long as they can afford to give the deposit, the mortgage fees, or even pay cash for the house and lot that will be built.
The eras of women and men bowed down planting rice from early morn to late lunch, the spouse or the grandmothers with their heads wrapped in bandannas and carrying a basket of lunches for the planters and traipsing through the pilapil; the carabao leading the farmer as he plows the soil, nipa huts with coconut and fruit trees beside them – all these scenes and more farm scenes as those that the painter Fernando Amorsolo had painted ideally would soon be deleted in our landscape and worst of all, in our memories. Only the painter’s works would be the living legacy of what those lands used to be.
Our grandchildren and great grandchildren would no longer experience that grand feeling of making their feet touch the earth and grass, riding a carabao, climbing trees to pick fruits or even to get the eggs of birds or chickens nestled up the branches. They would have no memories of how our forefathers had used the land to make it bear fruits and grow crops.
Why, why should development be this way?
Endangered species
Yesterday, as the rains started to fall, I saw three cows seemingly in a hurry to walk up the concrete road of that broad expanse of green landscape which could have been a riceland before. Then they huddled and stood together like a team of soldiers feeling the warmth between their bodies and unmoving while the rains trickled down their bodies. What was in their mind? Could it be a feeling of anxiety over the narrowing of grasslands that they could graze on? Could it be fears of being slaughtered once their owner could no longer feed them in the long run? Could it be a feeling of hopelessness over the lack of appreciation of their abilities to provide milk?
I learned, at a seminar conducted by Ramon Mendoza, of an American product made up of colostrum which is extracted from cows. This has anti-cancer properties, can prevent hairloss, energize and rejuvenate and strengthen the cells of the body by 20 years.
If our country would build ranches in all the provinces with rolling hills and mountains, and then fill them with cows and carabaos, then we could have a thriving cattle industry capable of providing colostrum for this company to package into capsules. We would also have an unlimited supply of milk.
Thus, I felt a pang of loss over the plight of these endangered species, the cows. But as I gazed around, the trucks and cranes digging the soil, a felled huge tree with its roots rising up, and houses dotting the landscape here and there, I knew that all their fears are real. The cows – our carabaos are already endangered species a long time ago with the destruction of agricultural lands -- would soon be made redundant, inutile, and invisible as the race for sheltering the people who have overcrowded in MetroManila in search of jobs goes on.
What happens when the entire country becomes all concrete jungle and then just to view birds, animals, butterflies and plants we all have to go to a zoo or a park as they contain these flora and fauna which no longer exist naturally around us?
The more affluent could always pack up and go to other lands where care of their environment is paramount. But, we the “hoi polloi” who have to scratch the grounds to eat daily, could only sigh and pray that our country could still be an oasis of natural beauty.
Where to start
Should we view life without land as a natural phenomenon? What is life without the land? I think we know the answers to these already. The lack of care for the land brought about landslides in Leyte, Bicol and Antipolo. Fruits and vegetables which could be grown just in our backyard before are now very rarely raised and are hardly sold in the market except for those grown in Benguet and then have to be transported to metroManila, hundreds of kilometers away. Yet we know their nutritional values and their importance for our bodies to be healthy which then makes it imperative for them to be naturally grown and made abundant.
Starting young
I believe that love of the environment should start at home and in the nurseries as the children are learning how to read and write. The latter are at that stage of being most receptive in learning new things which they could carry with them in their adulthood later on.
Actually, there is still time to encourage the children and the youth to enjoy the natural scenery in reality instead of those on the television screens. Their senses will be made sharper as they touch, smell and feel the plants and animals.
But I see right now the high school students as the forgotten or ignored sector of our society. They are the last in the list of lacking any feeling for the environment– they throw the wrappers of their chewing gum, the plastic bags of their buko juice, the cigarette stubs, the barbecue sticks and the foil wrappers of chicheria just about anywhere. They smoke in great abandon polluting the air. They could care less if they bother other people inside the internet shops with their loud voices as they play violent computer games. Saddest of all they seem not knowledgeable at all nor do they care enough about what social issues are currently being discussed and analyzed. But once they face the computer to play games, they suddenly become very much alive. Isn’t there a distortion of educational priorities at this time?
Hence the Department of Education should mandate all teachers and principals to daily remind students to respect the environment and do something to make it stick in the minds whether they are in school or in the outside world. It should provide filmshowings and VCDs depicting the beauty and value of Mother Nature, and how the young and adults too could be active participants in protecting, preserving and conserving our natural resources.
Also, shelter communities should be turned into small villages with only a hundred or so families and still surrounded by greenery that produce food crops. This type of development I think is being implemented somewhere in the south of Manila. We must insist on this to prevent that time from coming when every fruit and vegetable that we eat have to be imported from other countries as what is happening now to our rice, our staple food. Hence, those local governments approving land use must be aware of the consequences of environmental decisions that could make the land barren.
I hope that my impressions would touch the nerve of all environmentalists and policy makers in our society. I also pray that think tank groups would be created to dig into the issues that I have raised and provide ultimate solutions on how we could raise generations of lovers of lands and Mother Nature.
Lastly, the President has to set the prime example of being an environmentalist by quitting to smoke. That actually can be very easy: he should always carry an orange fruit to munch whenever he feels that pang to puff a stick. Or he could imagine nicotine eating up every cell in his lungs its sticking like black tar on every globule of his lungs which later on would make him breathe with great difficulty. Lastly we must ask him if he knows how to meditate as this is a good tool for having great self control against all forms of addiction not just smoking.
Ancestral lands for everyone
Something connects me to the land as if my soul is deeply infused in it. I now recall Macliing, the Igorot leader against the construction of the Chico Hydroelectric Project in Northern Luzon, and his statement: “Why talk of owning the land when it is the other way around: the land owns us?” He said this during a bodong in his community, Bugnay, Kalinga in 1970 before he was murdered by the military. He emphasized the idea that the land is for everyone and not for a few thus expressing the Igorot belief of the communal ownership of all natural resources. (Note: The bodong is a peacepact meeting among all the elders of affected tribes and the people together with their guests from the lowlands. )
It is an ancient belief that has been handed down for generations in their tribal societies. It is the same belief of the Tingguians of Abra who resisted the setting up of the Cellophil Resources company in their ancestral lands which were supposed to be planted with cellophil trees. Cellophil is that element used by factories for making paper.
All over the world, tribal communities hold the same idea. It is the same belief that the Indians in North America held before they were conquered by the colonialists and which was why they resisted the incursions into their lands vehemently.
Gandhi echoed the same belief when he said, “The earth’s resources are for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.” In other words, Land is for everyone. It does not need titling by anyone as they who have needs should be free to use it.
Holding Up the Land, painting by emma orozco 2010 now hanging at the office Ms. Rosalinda Pineda-Ofreneo, Ph.D., Dean of the UP College of Social Work and Community Development
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