Story & photos by Henrylito D. Tacio
FROM souls to soils…. That was what Harold Ray Watson specifically did. He came to the Philippines as a missionary to save wandering souls, but ended up saving soils—particularly topsoil, which most people consider as mere dirt.
In the early 1970 Watson—then the director of the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC)—heard several complaints of low and declining farm income from upland farmers in Barangay Kinuskusan of Bansalan, Davao del Sur.
Watson recalled that in one area, corn production had dropped per hectare from 3.5 tons to about only half a ton in a span of 10 years. Other crop yields had also dropped as much as 60 percent to 80 percent during the same period.
An agriculturist by profession, Watson did his own investigation of the situation in the area. He came to conclusion that the main culprit for the low yields was the depletion of soil and nutrients through erosion.
“Soil erosion is a bane to any nation—far worse than any outside enemy coming into a country and conquering it, because it is an enemy you cannot see vividly,” said Watson, who received the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1985 for Peace and International Understanding. “It’s a slow creeping enemy that soon possesses the land.”
Surely, life will cease to exist without topsoil. Not too many Filipinos know that soil erosion affects 63 percent to 76 percent of the country’s total land area of 30 million hectares. Most of the areas affected by erosion are those in the uplands, of which 60 percent of the country is considered as such. People who live in these areas belong to the poorest of the poor, and are described as “marginalized”, or even “illiterate”.
“The upland farmer faces a very dark future—unless something can be done for him very soon,” he told this writer. “He is the least educated, least paid, least healthy, least hopeful and most neglected in agricultural development of all people in the Philippines.”
According to Watson, soil erosion will imperil the country’s food supply in the coming years.
“Land is not being remade,” Watson averred. “Soil is made by God and put here for man to use, not for one generation but forever. It takes thousands of years to build 1 inch of topsoil, but only one strong [torrent of] rain to remove that much sediment on the slopes of mountains.”
Watson cited deforestation as one of the primary culprits of soil erosion in the country. “Without the canopies of the trees to hold it together, rains easily wash soil downstream, clogging up rivers and dams with silt,” he explained. “This occurrence causes rivers to overflow, flooding farmlands.”
Remember the Ormoc City tragedy, where more than 5,000 people perished? Studies show that the denudation of the mountains surrounding the area caused the ensuing flashfloods. Freshly cut logs lay strewn all around the bodies of the victims. Mudslides brought down the logs from the mountains to the city.
Life of farming
WATSON loves farming, because he was born on a farm 23 kilometers from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He is the second child and only son of Joseph Watson and Dorothy Mae Cagle. His father farmed cotton, corn and watermelon on about 60 hectares of sloping hillside land. He recalled the place as having forests (“lots of them,” he said), creeks and rivers.
After his parents separated, his father worked at a government arsenal in Texas and later remarried. His mother and the two other children remained in Mississippi on the family farm. Although both parents had a strong influence on him, it was his grandfather (“a very gentle, honest, humble and well-trained person with no vices and with a strong belief in God”) who really influenced him totally.
Finishing eighth grade at the McLeurien, he enrolled at the Forest County Agricultural High School in nearby Brooklyn, Mississippi. After finishing high school, he served in the United States Air Force from 1952 to 1956.
It was in Okinawa, Japan, that a “job opportunity” completely transformed him. Once on a jaunt around the island with a friend, he bumped into an agricultural missionary for the Methodists. Although he talked with the missionary for a few minutes, he discovered that farming and preaching could go together.
At that time, Watson didn’t know much about missions. But he started to think, “This is what I would like to do”. After all, he had always liked to work with people, and he loved to teach.
Following his discharge, he married his wife, Elizabeth Joyce, who was then attending Hinds Junior College in Raymond, Mississippi. Within a year, he transferred to Mississippi State University and obtained an undergraduate degree in agriculture. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1959, and Master of Science degree in 1960.
He felt, however, that something was missing. So, he decided to study at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. The years that followed saw him apply for a career as a missionary. The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board in Richmond, Virginia, accepted his application and was given the option to choose which country he wanted to serve.
Watson chose the Philippines, specifically Mindanao. With his wife and three sons, he came to the country in 1964, “with a desire to share with the Filipino people what Jesus Christ has done for us”.
Life in PHL
HE recalled the climate was very warm when they arrived. Since they came from Mississippi, which also almost had the same temperature, the weather didn’t bother that much. That aside, the Filipino people made an indelible impression on him, whom he described as “hospitable, genuine, kind and generous with their time”.
From 1965 to 1970, Watson served at the Southern Baptist College in M’lang, North Cotabato, as an agricultural consultant, and also worked with rural farmers and churches in the area. In 1971 Watson opened the MBRLC, a training center for farmers, which integrates agricultural development with Bible teaching. He served as director for the center until his retirement in 1997.
The Bible stated, in Romans 6:23, “For sin pays its wage… death”. “When man sins against the earth, the wage of that sin is death or destruction. This seems to be a universal law of God and relates to all of God’s creation,” Watson explained. “We face the reality of what man’s sins against the earth have caused. We see land degradation expressing itself in the destruction of forests, loss of topsoil, pollution of streams and even the air we breathe.
“We are facing not a mere problem, but of destruction, and even death, if we continue to destroy the natural resources that support life on Earth,” Watson said.
At the MBRLC, Watson and some of his Filipino staff members tried to find ways to stop soil erosion and its root cause: deforestation. They kept on experimenting, searching for something simple and practical, yet doable.
Back to basics
One day, the group gathered to brainstorm. “We decided to start with what we knew,” Watson recalled. “We could run a contour or a terrace line, but how could we keep it there? Suppose, we took this ‘miracle plant’ locally known as ipil-ipil people had been talking about growing in the flatlands and put it around the terrace in hedgerows. If it is a legume, we would be enriching the soil. Then we will take the leaves of this plant and put them back on the soil. We knew that one line would not hold the soil, so we said, ‘Let’s make a double line’”.
They got excited. If the method worked, it would stop erosion, rebuild soil and increase crop yield. Within an afternoon, the basic theory of Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT) came into existence.
Watson believed that just like the prophet David who defeated the leviathan Goliath with just a slingshot and a stone, going back to the basics could solve the problems. “We do not need modern technologies and high-tech gadgets to defeat the enemy. All we have to do is use what God has provided us throughout the years,” he said.
SALT can help control soil erosion. A seven-year study conducted at the MBRLC showed that a farm tilled in the traditional manner erodes at the rate of 1,163.4 metric tons (MT) per hectare per year. In comparison, a SALT farm erodes at the rate of only 20.2 MT per hectare per year.
The rate of soil loss in a SALT farm is 3.4 MT per hectare per year, which is within the tolerable range. Most scientists place acceptable soil loss limits for tropical countries like the Philippines within the range of 10 to 12 metric tons per hectare per year. The non-SALT farm, on the other hand, has an annual soil loss rate of 194.3 MT per hectare.
The success of SALT paved way to other variants: Simple Agro-Livestock Technology 2 (SALT 2), where goats are integrated into the original system; Sustainable Agroforest Land Technology (SALT 3), a small-scale reforestation program; and Small Agrofruit Livelihood Technology (SALT 4).
To provide the proper nutrients for farmers and their families living in the lowlands, Watson introduced Food Always In The Home (FAITH) gardening. Instead of throwing away garbage, the family can place them in the basket composts built at the center of the garden plots.
SALT has been adopted in other parts of the world to battle hunger and other environmental problems.
In 1989 he established the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation for the purpose of extending awareness of farming technologies, suitable for poor upland farmers, to other countries in Asia.
In 1997, he retired from his missionary work and returned to the US for good. “I have spent half of my life in the Philippines,” he said. “In fact, I consider this country as my second home.”
While he has yet to come back to the Philippines—the last time was when he was awarded a PhD degree, honoris causa, by the M’lang Baptist College—his legacy continues. Most Filipino farmers and those in other parts of Asia are still adopting the systems that he has created.
“Three out of four farmers in developing countries farm in the hills,” he said when he accepted the Nobel Prize of Asia in 1985. “When they hold a fistful of exhausted soil and let it fall to the ground, they feel their livelihood slipping through their fingers.”
He continued: “Land degradation is a problem affecting the standard of living of many nations, especially on the millions who live on and farm the hillsides.”
He also said: “I call on people everywhere to help stem the tide of this wave of destruction while there is still time.”
Image credits: Jimbo Albano, Henrylito D. Tacio