The men sat in a huddle on neatly constructed benches under towering trees, exchanging light banter about the coming corn harvest. The trees are acacia mangium. a commercial type grown for its timber. Gently running up and down the slopes, they have grown robust in these once barren hills hemming the town of Piagapo in Lanao del Sur. Not far from the men’s huddle lay a cluster of wooden cottages made from the wood of these same trees. The modest dwellings are nearing completion and waiting to welcome their new occupants. They are civilian evacuees from a neighboring province where, two years ago, the government military waged an all-out offensive against forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front which still has to make peace with the government.
In most parts of Mindanao though, peace has set in. Seeing Piagapo’s folk in such lighthearted gathering was a rare sight not so long ago when violent conflict kept the civilian population on their toes. Then, Piagapo’s hills resounded with artillery burst as government fighter planes and helicopter gunships pounded the positions of the then secessionist Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
This was in the mid-1970s when "Lanao" became a buzzword across the islands during the martial law years. Government soldiers returning to Manila from Mindanao had spread stories of the fierce fighting waged in the province against the mostly Maranao regional force of the MNLF. That the Maranaos put up a strong resistance came as no surprise. After all, centuries of Spanish rule made little headway in colonizing and Christianizing Lanao. The capital city of Marawi has remained almost 100 percent Muslim.
Today, Piagapo and its neighboring towns in Lanao del Sur, and other provinces in Mindanao, are reaping the dividends of peace. Nearly an hour’s drive from Marawi City, Piagapo lies nestled amid gently rolling hills 375 feet above sea level.The rolling terrain is well-suited to corn, and corn farming has in fact been the community’s main source of income for generations. Rice farming only comes second.
In 1997, help came to the town’s conflict-ravaged barangays through the Special Zone of Peace and Development Social Fund (SZOPAD-SF) and the USAID-funded Emergency Livelihood Assistance Program (ELAP), now renamed Livelihood Enhancement and Peace (LEAP) program. The ELAP initially provided a number of the town’s farmers with corn seeds and fertilizers so they could resume their farming activities. Later the program would fund a solar drying facility, while SZOPAD built a 720 square meter warehouse for the farmers’ crop harvests. This year, the LEAP program, with counterpart funds from the beneficiaries, supplied the community with a corn sheller and small corn mill.
Datu Abdul Jabbar, former combatant leader and now the town’s vice-mayor, said they could have installed the facilities in the town proper but chose the hillside location instead to put the undeveloped slopes to good use. It would also be accessible to most of the town’s farmers spread out in its 37 barangays.
"These parts which used to be unpopulated are now busy with farm activity." the vice-mayor says. Indeed farm hectarage in the town has grown tremendously. More than 150 hectares are now planted to hybrid corn while another 70 have been planted to high-yielding rice. Years before the peace pact was finally sealed, Abdul Jabbar himself had initiated the planting of six hectares of the hillside slopes with timber trees with which, he hoped, the community could regularly supply raw material for a paper mill in Agusan.
Ramel Panakawan, another former combatant turned cluster leader of the benefeciaries, said that the farmers are now reaping the benefits of the USAID-funded assistance program. "Our farmers are now more conscious of their crop yields, having been exposed to modern farming and crop technologies," he says. In these once bare hills and in older fields, new crops are being planted and harvested, among them abaca (hemp), coffee, peanuts, and leafy vegetables.
Never before has the farmers’ enthusiasm over their crops been more pronounced. "They have begun to think big," says Abdul Jabbar. At the newly acquired corn mill, one of the town’s farmers recently had his harvest milled for a trial shipment to a client in Cagayan de Oro City, a good three hours away. In one farm site, another farmer eagerly awaited the next round of trial planting of processing-grade potato.
The beneficiaries are one in giving credit to the program’s systematic way of helping them. "Even as the program gave us seeds and fertilizers, it also encouraged us to spread the benefits to the rest of the community." says Panakawan who now also serves as the chairman of the Tapukhan Bangsamoro Multipurpose Cooperative.
Under the assistance program, selected beneficiaries are given enough seeds and fertilizers for two croppings. On their own initiatives, part of their harvest income was channeled to a fund managed by themeselves. The fund was the instrument by which other community members were given assistance to start or expand their own farming activities. This has given the program a multiplier effect.
Datu Abdul Jabbar foresees bigger developments for his community. Even industrial-scale plantations may not be far off the horizon. As he gazes from his hilltop farmhouse at the warehouse and new corn milling facilities, he cannot help but be mildly amazed at the favorable turn of events. "Just four years ago, having these facilities was just a dream,"he says. "Now they’re making development in these remote hills a reality."