BARANGAY La Union, Maitum, Sarangani Province  - Basket weaving used to be the only source of income for the women in this community.

But capitalizing on their rich ancestral soil, a women’s organization is now engaged actively in lakatan and peanut production.

Composed of 25 members, the New La Union Women’s Association is hoping that their diversified farming project will not just augment the family’s income but raise them from the usual dearth of financial resources.

Eunice Movilla said their association members were trained in basket-making. Their products are sold in their small cooperative store. However, income from such activity is not enough their income for most households only earn from farming abaca.

“We are still making baskets. But in addition to that we are now engaged in diversified farming that conforms well to the nature of our organization,” said Movilla, the association’s president.

Half of the organization’s members are Indigenous Peoples (IPs), mostly members of the T’boli tribe. The other half are non-IPs.

“The non-IPs who live in the lower part of the barangay are engaged in lakatan production while most IPs, who live in the higher part of barangay, are into peanut production,” she said.

She added that peanut thrives well in the area of the IPs as it does not require much of their time. Their farms are just adjacent to their houses.

Eunice who is involved in lakatan production said each member voluntarily chooses what project would they be part of.

“We choose our project basically based on our convenience.  We choose the project that is located near where we live. So, there are also IPs who are involved in lakatan production,” Eunice said.

“When we learned that the Mindanao Rural Development Program (MRDP) of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the local government unit were identifying beneficiaries for livelihood project we proposed diversified farming for our organization,” Eunice said.

Luckily, besides the program’s targeting to benefit women and IPs, their decent record as an organization merited them to be among the first batch of beneficiaries in 2008.

Aside from banana and peanut production, their project proposal also included swine and vegetable production. They alternate planting vegetable and peanuts.

With a total funding of P250,000 under the Community Fund for Agricultural (CFAD) component, the organization bought farming inputs including organic fertilizer, banana seedlings and peanut seeds.

“Peanut production is easy for us to do. We used to plant this crop before but our production is very limited due to the capital constraints,” said T’Boli women leader Patricia Soldivilla. “Our planting of peanut before is household-based and it cannot really supply the demands of the local market. We wanted to expand but we simply just can’t.”

Today, they plant peanut to at least one-fourth hectare farm lot for which they expect to harvest over 40 kilos per cropping. While about half a hectare is planted to lakatan banana. (Sherwin B. Manual)

 In Photo: Patricia Soldivilla, a T’boli member of the New La Union Women’s Association, joins other women in her group tend her parcel of land planted to peanuts in the highlands of Sarangani province. The local government of Maitum and the Department of Agriculture through the Mindanao Rehabilitation and Development Program has partnered to provide agri-based livelihoods for the women and indigenous peoples in many remote areas of the town.