NABUNTURAN, Compostela Valley Province—Even without the pork and the bagoong, their garden is cauldron of “pinakbet.”

The seven-hectare sprawl of congregated farm land owned by 11 farmers is planted to ampalaya (bitter gourd), squash, eggplant, string beans, tomato and okra, ingredients to the hugely popular Ilocano dish called pinakbet.

The site, now the source of their better incomes, is a revival of the greenery and the better income of vegetable farming in the years past.

“We’ve been vegetable farmers before. But when the insurgent groups including the New People’s Army invaded this part of the barangay most of the farmers abandoned the area to escape from the strife,” said Alberto Osorio, chairman of the Upland Barangay Linda Association (Ubla).

“Most farm lands in barangay Linda were devoted to vegetable farming even beyond the seven-hectare garden that we have now. Plus we were given additional rubber production project from the Upland Development Project (UDP),” he added.

When the insurgency problem was resolved, farmers were left with no capital, nothing to start with to go back to their farming.

But the farmers’ enthusiasm and hope in vegetable gardening was renewed when the local government identified them as beneficiaries of the Department of Agriculture – Mindanao Rural Development Program (DA-MRDP).

The MRDP is a poverty-alleviation initiative implemented under the DA with funding from the World Bank, the national government and local government units in Mindanao.

Under the Community Fund for Agriculture Development (CFAD), the livelihood component of the program, the association received P250,000 which the group used to buy inputs for their vegetable farming and rubber seedlings.

“Under the CFAD fund we proposed two projects: one is vegetable farming and the second, rubber production to expand our previous project under DA-UDP,” Osorio said.

Ubla has 35 members, with the first 11 members selected to do the vegetable farming based on their experience and expertise. The rest of the members did the rubber production project.

The 11 vegetable farmers already had their third round of planting the “pinakbet” vegetables which earned the association  a gross income of over P500,000.

Rogelio Clariada, a member of Ubla, obtained 10 sacks of vermicast, 1 sack of urea, 1 x 100 grams of ampalaya seeds and 10 kilos plastic twine for trellis.

During their first cropping, Clariada tasted the sweeter side of ampalaya.

The 58-year-old widower planted a total of 2,000 ampalaya seedlings on his two parcels of farm lots. The lots yielded a total of 520 kilos and grossed him P18,200.

But his ampalaya income was just another branch of the vine. On the first rounds of planting, he planted tomatoes which earned him P126,700 from his total harvest of 187 crates.