PARCHED AND BARREN

Today. Sirao land lays barren. (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA)

Junrey Mabini never imagined the day will come when he, who takes pride at his being a farmer, will end up considering to find work as a security guard.

Mabini, 31, grew up in a family farm, and it was natural for him to become one when he inherited some parcels of land from his father in Sitio Tawagan, Barangay Sirao in Cebu City.

Today, however, what Mabini and farmers like him in Sirao have are crops of shriveled corn, bell and cayenne peppers that are just a fourth of their usual sizes, and stunted cauliflower that are unable to grow properly on lands so parched and left barren by months of little or no rain.

“Dili na ni mapuslan. Kaning baguio beans wala pay buwan nangamatay na. Ang tangkong dapat hapit usa ka metros ang gidak-on ana pero tanawa karon wala gani kaabot og tulo ka pulgada. Ang mga sili espada nikuyot. Mahulog nga utan-utanon ning sobra,” Mabini said. (My crops can no longer be sold. The baguio beans died barely a month after they were planted. The water spinach are supposed to be a meter long by now but they are barely three inches. The peppers shriveled.)

Without an earning to support his wife and three young children, Mabini said he would now consider applying for a job as a security guard.

“Mangita nalang kog trabaho ani. Ganahan ra man unta ko nga mananom kay … wala man sad koy amo. Unsaon ta man dili naman gyud ni mapuslan unsa man akong ikapakaon sa akong pamilya kun dili ko manarbaho,” he said.

(I have a find another work. As much as I want to stay as a farmer, there is no harvest to gain from. I cannot feed my family if I won’t work.)

Rubin Presbitero, 36, another Sirao farmer, said he no longer hoped to recover the P800 he spent to grow his cauliflowers and would be happy to earn even just P100 from what’s left of his crop.

Mabini and Presbitero are not alone. Their situation is happening to a still undetermined number of farmers in the 28 upland farming barangays in Cebu City that have been listed to be the worst affected by months of lack or absence of rain.

The scarcity of rainfall has also made it extremely difficult for cutflower farmers to grow summer blooms, particularly those in the famous Sirao flower farms.

NO DRY SPELL IN CEBU?

To date, however, Cebu City and province are still not listed by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophyiscal and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) as among the areas in the country that face a dry spell, much less suffering from drought.

According to Pagasa, 24 percent or 19 provinces in the country would experience drought by the end of March, including three in the Visayas.

Cebu remained not in the list even if both the city and province have been placed by their respective local government units under a state of calamity.

By Pagasa’s reckoning, an area can only be placed under a “dry spell” if it had three consecutive months of below normal rainfall (21-60 percent reduction from average rainfall) and under ”drought” if it had three consecutive months of way below normal rainfall (60 percent reduction from average rainfall).

There has been zero rainfall in Cebu since the start of April when, at this month of the year, the average rainfall should have been 50 millimeters, said Pagasa Mactan weather specialist Romeo Aguirre.

But if the rainfall will remain below normal by the end of this month, then “there’s a possibility that (Cebu will be categorized as under a) dry spell,” said Aguirre.

ZERO PRODUCTION

Councilor David Tumulak, who also heads the Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council, however, said that the dry spell has affected all 31 mountain barangays in the city, with 28 of them hit badly by the absence of rain since they began planting in February.

City Agriculturist Joelito Baclayon said as of end of March, their records showed that only 87.4 hectares of the total 8,119 hectares of productive land in the 28 barangays were affected by the dry spell.

Of the affected farms, only 4 hectares have zero production, he said.

Baclayon also said based on the same assessment, only 317 farmers from among the some 8,000 farmers in the city were affected by the dry spell.

He also explained that many farmers would not also want to plant in the summer since rain is usually scarce during this time.

Farmers, he added, use the summer months to prepare their lands for the rainy season.

But Badayon admitted that they expected the situation to get worse with little rainfall expected in April and May.

In Barangay Lusaran, extreme heat and the disappearance of natural springs in the upland village have also made it impossible to grow another batch of harvest.

Lusaran Barangay Captain Armando Ermac told Cebu Daily News that their residents, who are mostly farmers, have complained about their withered plants.

“Sige na silag reklamo kay nangalaya ug nangamatay na ilang mga tanom kay way tubig (They kept on complaining about their withered and dead plants because all sources of water had dried up),” said Ermac.

Most of their produce are sweet corn, gourd, eggplants and tomatoes. The natural springs located on the hilly portions of the village dried up even before the summer season officially began in mid-March.

He said to address the situation, he already asked Cebu City Hall for empty barrels and a budget for transportation to supply water to upland sitios, which are located far from the river, which remains now as the only source of water in the barangay.

Ermac said they were expecting to receive anytime the empty barrels they requested from City Hall last week that they would use to store water they would take from a river located about four kilometers from the upland sitios (sub-villages).

“I own a multicab so I can bring barrels of water to them. We have to keep the water supply to these farmers since these are their main source of livelihood,” he said.

“Right now, he said, some farmers get the water from the nearby river through their own transportation like motorcycles. Those, who have no vehicles, however, bring the water by the gallons on foot.

Barangay Captain Winefredo Macario of Sudlon II said they would also request for empty barrels from City Hall.

“We are also asking for the same thing, we also need barrels to transport the water from the source to the households,” said Macario in Cebuano.

Macario said they get water for irrigation from underground caves located in Sitios Balao, Calubihan, Kawayanan and Gabi.

“What we do is we use water pumps and long hoses to generate our supply from those caves. But the water gets getting farther,” he said.

Sudlon II used to have an irrigation system for its farm lands but most of the water sources had since dried up.

HEAT INDEX DROPS

Meanwhile, the temperature in Cebu yesterday remained high at 34 degrees Celsius but the heat index slightly dropped at 38 degrees Celsius compared to Friday’s 44.1 degrees Celsius.

Romeo Aguirre explained that the cause of lower heat index was due to less moisture in the air, causing relative humidity to drop from 65 percent to 53 percent over the last two days.

Heat index, also called as human discomfort index, is the actual temperature felt by the body based on air temperature, humidity and surrounding environment.

Aguirre said the weather temperature and heat index were still expected to rise because the expected highest temperature would still be in May, compounded by the prevailing El Niño weather phenomenon affecting the Philippines that is expected to end in June yet.