Marina Ular, a widow from Clarin, Misamis Occidental, Philippines, used to have sleepless nights during a full moon and strong typhoons. She used to worry that water from the nearby sea would submerge her farm and damage her rice crop, resulting in poor or zero harvest.
Thus, pail in hand, she would go back and forth to her farm to see if saltwater was coming in; and when it did, she would make a futile effort to keep the water from engulfing her farm by collecting it with a pail.
These days, Ular sleeps soundly even when there is a strong typhoon or when the full moon causes sea water to rise and flood her farm. She is confident that the new rice variety she planted— Salinas—could tolerate salt water.
Salinas is a rice variety that Ular herself selected during a Farmer Field School (FFS) on rice that she and her neighbor-farmers attended. In that FFS, the farmer-participants tested no less than 15 rice varieties for adaptation to the salinity of their soil. Ular was able to select the variety Salinas.
Ular planted 3.5 kilograms of Salinas from their harvest in the FFS in her 350 square meter rice farm. The variety, which matures in 110 days, yielded 330 kilos of rice grains. Ular’s neighbors were awed by the performance of the variety, and four of them asked for some Salinas seeds. They noticed that apart from its high yield and minimal need for fertilizer, Salinas was not attacked by pests, which used to wreak havoc in their municipality.
Salt-water intrusion into rice fields ranks first in the Climate Change Hazards in Clarin, according to the Climate Vulnerability Assessment (CVA) conducted by SEARICE in the municipality. It usually happens during the full moon, new moon, and during heavy rains in the months of January, June, and December.
If the intrusion occurs during the vegetative stage, the seedlings eventually die, resulting in zero harvest. If the intrusion takes place during the reproductive stage, the harvest is reduced by 50 percent, resulting in low income.
But now that they are using the Salinas variety, many farmers can now afford to sleep through high tides and typhoons.
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