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On our Earth Village front yard sits thousands of sacks worth of shit. This is lately the everyday chore on the months COVID-19 locks down a global economy - we harvest and sift through countless quantity of carabao crap funneled from across the extensive reaches of the 18 puroks of Barangay Bacungan, home to a population of five to six thousand Filipinos, native-born or emigrated to these islands.
The Power of the People ferment within these mountains of manure. As the Philippines is paralyzed by a pandemic, our extensive village in Puerto Princesa in Palawan perceive these piles of poop as the passkey to unlocking some deeply disabling planetary problems. Everyday, our red multicab truck sets out to collect fertilizer ingredients that multitudes of local villagers now stuff into sacks. Besides these, seaweed, chopped banana trunks and coconut husks are also considered currency. These many commonplace bio-wastes laying around their fields and backyards are suddenly part of local trade, what in Barangay Bacungan is officially agreed upon as Local Money. |
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With the help of inoculants and our waste water systems, manure and other bio-wastes are tenderly tended, becoming essential soil not readily available in the nearby city where a large population is actively shifting to organic and plant-based food production.
In the midst of the lockdown and the months after it - for every sack of manure, seaweed and chopped banana trunks, villagers are able to receive 1 to 3 kilos of rice depending on the size of the sack submitted. For those isolated communities without these (particularly coastal towns), we conduct trainings on how to carbonize coconut husks that enrich the kind of potting soil favored in city-based container gardening projects. The charcoaled husks become an integral part of the exchange process.
What we barter beyond food and bio-wastes are people’s idle time and work. Early through the COVID crisis, we understood the need to activate collective energy. Even now as it starts to rain, dried manure becomes moist and then melts into the wet earth. In the rainy season, manure is difficult or impossible to collect. It is exactly in these summer months that villagers can gather these at a critical time we cannot allow our farmers to go hungry.
Wherever we trade rice for wastes, the villagers are profuse with gratitude. Their backyards are vast, and their strong bodies are not conditioned to stay idle. They have capacities to contribute to the national emergency whilst following strict social distancing rules. No physical contact is needed to walk the fields harvesting what in farms and city gardens right now, are free and organic source of essential minerals. As we make food available to local folks, so do they contribute to places where soil is scarce.
We call this productive offering, Bacungan: Heart and Soil - an integrative response to COVID-19 agreed upon by the Barangay Council led by Kapitan Gina, along with the 18 participating puroks of one of the largest barangays in the Philippines (based on land area).
Beyond rice stock, a margin of the profits generated also purchases organic seed, soap with grey water fertilizing functions and help fund much needed water projects where villagers themselves struggle to plant their own produce.
In the midst of the lockdown and the months after it - for every sack of manure, seaweed and chopped banana trunks, villagers are able to receive 1 to 3 kilos of rice depending on the size of the sack submitted. For those isolated communities without these (particularly coastal towns), we conduct trainings on how to carbonize coconut husks that enrich the kind of potting soil favored in city-based container gardening projects. The charcoaled husks become an integral part of the exchange process.
What we barter beyond food and bio-wastes are people’s idle time and work. Early through the COVID crisis, we understood the need to activate collective energy. Even now as it starts to rain, dried manure becomes moist and then melts into the wet earth. In the rainy season, manure is difficult or impossible to collect. It is exactly in these summer months that villagers can gather these at a critical time we cannot allow our farmers to go hungry.
Wherever we trade rice for wastes, the villagers are profuse with gratitude. Their backyards are vast, and their strong bodies are not conditioned to stay idle. They have capacities to contribute to the national emergency whilst following strict social distancing rules. No physical contact is needed to walk the fields harvesting what in farms and city gardens right now, are free and organic source of essential minerals. As we make food available to local folks, so do they contribute to places where soil is scarce.
We call this productive offering, Bacungan: Heart and Soil - an integrative response to COVID-19 agreed upon by the Barangay Council led by Kapitan Gina, along with the 18 participating puroks of one of the largest barangays in the Philippines (based on land area).
Beyond rice stock, a margin of the profits generated also purchases organic seed, soap with grey water fertilizing functions and help fund much needed water projects where villagers themselves struggle to plant their own produce.
This partnership between rural countryside and urban city is the product of numerous socially-distanced meetings between many stakeholders, finally culminating in a large meeting held in Maia Earth Village attended by the purok presidents, fertilizer sellers from the city, the barangay council and captain, and the numerous volunteers that have been working hard for many weeks to establish a safe and productive zone to achieve this collective effort.
Arriving at a circular economy required various components:
First - we set aside private property for public usage, with strong commitment that the use of place where large amounts of biowastes are converted into “super soil” is offered in the long-term without profit by the land owners and residents living in it.
Second - having received valuable financial assistance from around the world, we purchased rice stocks since mid-March that went into an honesty-trading mechanism starting with some initial puroks. Without this start-up food stock, we would not have the rich composts lined up in our processing areas ready for delivery to the city today.
Third - in the last week, Yamang Bukid Farm lent their industrial shredder reducing the constant workload of our team of international and local volunteers busily organizing our nursery, compost mounds, village gardens, water systems and recycling stations under the hot sun.
Fourth - we conducted various meetings with a green architect, organic soil traders, a nutrition center and other city-based eco-advocates to determine the real needs for rich compost, and how these may be easily acquired by the people demanding for them even as large agri-poultry shops run out of stocks for fertilizer and compost.
Arriving at a circular economy required various components:
First - we set aside private property for public usage, with strong commitment that the use of place where large amounts of biowastes are converted into “super soil” is offered in the long-term without profit by the land owners and residents living in it.
Second - having received valuable financial assistance from around the world, we purchased rice stocks since mid-March that went into an honesty-trading mechanism starting with some initial puroks. Without this start-up food stock, we would not have the rich composts lined up in our processing areas ready for delivery to the city today.
Third - in the last week, Yamang Bukid Farm lent their industrial shredder reducing the constant workload of our team of international and local volunteers busily organizing our nursery, compost mounds, village gardens, water systems and recycling stations under the hot sun.
Fourth - we conducted various meetings with a green architect, organic soil traders, a nutrition center and other city-based eco-advocates to determine the real needs for rich compost, and how these may be easily acquired by the people demanding for them even as large agri-poultry shops run out of stocks for fertilizer and compost.
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Fifth - Thanks to their strong leadership, active purok presidents have mobilized hundreds of villagers who were willing to harvest the bio-wastes, in exchange for rice sacks delivered to each village. At this time, we are barely able to collect the materials piled up in plenty of purok centers, village stages, homes and fields. One barangay kagawad has committed his truck free of use to assist our one exhausted multi-cab to deliver these materials to prevent a backlog of material from accumulating.
Simultaneous to these, we have various Bayanihan projects ongoing this April to May: 1.) we are able to resolve a major water crisis in Maranat Tres and Dos (thank you Surge from Dubai for sponsoring a secured water well, tank and filter system), 2.) livelihood concerns in various puroks and 3.) some seed saving-backyard gardening processes around Bacungan. For interested partners, our next developmental phases for May to July are: 1.) production of organic soap (bath, dishwash, laundry) for converting used graywater for fertilization of rural and urban home gardens, 2.) Bacungan community cafe, organic market and tribal crafts shop in Magarwak community, 3.) permaculture meets nutrition courses in our training/dialogue spaces in Puerto Princesa City and 4.) helping communities around the world with similar conditions as Barangay Bacungan and Puerto Princesa City access information and possible donor systems. |
Even in the solitude of a lockdown, there is a spirit of strong solidarity. Establishing a healing process founded on all-around inclusivity is in its early stages, needing assistance to keep the volunteer momentum alive months from now after the lockdown is lifted and the pandemic maintains its extensive socio-economic effects.
The return to tribal-style barter systems signify many things:
First - we shift to the localized use of our natural resources, addressing climate change issues caused by globalization and modernization.
Second - by promoting peer to peer non-monetary exchanges, decentralized relationships come alive through conscious and self-organized transactions. Heavy reliance on aid and charitable dole-outs are healed through active levels of transparent that invite participation of so many levels of a complex Southeast Asian society in its post-colonial developmental phases.
Third - in a gift-based economy, competition over profit gives way to greater care for earth and its many inhabitants. This is why Bacungan’s stakeholders agree that poop economy for now is a common enterprise and that no business will compete and profit for resources that should benefit all the residents of our large town.
Where the parts of a collective become stronger, so does society act as an integrated Whole. Where there is fertile ground, we nurture a Garden of Hope.
In Barangay Bacungan, transitions to the “new normal” begins with the most basic. For its simple wise folk, basic goodness is sufficient medicine that heals what ails.
Heart and Soil is an ongoing decomposition that facilitates a slow and transformative growth process. To the volunteers and contributors who were here for the people at a critical moment, the earth village is filled with gratitude. We offer the model for other cultures interested in our learnings from this process.