Solar power helps quench thirst of Lanao Sur farms
TARAKA, LANAO DEL SUR—At the heart of this town of some 30,000 people is a meandering river named after it.
Snaking at least 20 kilometers from the mountains of nearby Maguing town, Taraka River is one of four major tributaries of the 31,000-hectare Lake Lanao, one of the world’s 15 ancient lakes.
Save for domestic use such as washing and bathing, it is ironic that amid the readily available resource from the river, the town had thirsted for irrigation and potable water for a long time.
“We have to wait for rains to come so we can start to till our fields and plant palay,” says 25-year-old farmer Damasira Manguda.
Because of this scarcity of irrigation water, farmers here could only plant palay once a year, limiting their earning capacity.
Manguda, like other rice farmers here, have learned palay cultivation from forebears who also faced the same constraint of lack of irrigation water during their lifetime.
Change came
Things changed in August 2021, when a solar-powered pump brought water from the river gushing out of 6-inch polyethylene pipes into fertile but underutilized fields, bringing hopes of progress for the fourth-class municipality.
This development journey of the town started in 2019 when Mayor Nashiba Sumagayan was introduced to solar-powered irrigation system (SPIS) through the water supply program of Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) that sought to cultivate the southern region’s vast potential for agricultural development by harnessing available water resources.
Sumagayan lost no time to learn how the SPIS works through a model community in Cotabato province. She then organized a local government team so they can replicate it to the circumstances of the town.
MinDA was instrumental in facilitating the Taraka local government through the nitty-gritty of its own SPIS program, even arranging a P115-million loan from the Development Bank of the Philippines to bankroll the initiative.
Systems
Given the potential, the local government targeted up to 1,200 ha of farmland to be irrigated, spanning the villages of Mangayao, Moriatao Luksa Datu, Lumasa, Salvador Conch and Malungun.
This required the setting up of six systems, each built on about 800-square-meter lot donated for such purpose by cooperating landowners.
One system has a capacity of 27 horsepower generated by 175 solar panels, says municipal engineer Saidamen Abas.
Greenergy Solar, a pioneer in solar power technology in Mindanao, was among those who provided technical support to Taraka for its SPIS program.
Amenola Kumadug, SPIS caretaker in Malungun village, says he was trained to operate and do basic maintenance of the system: water from the river is first pumped to a main reservoir before it goes to another reservoir to supply the water needs of farms.
Kumadug says the solar-powered system is easy to operate as it can be turned on or off quickly.
With irrigation water made available, farmers immediately experienced a spike in productivity. From 10 cavans (1 cavan is equivalent to 50 kilos) of palay harvested per hectare, Manguda says their harvest rose to 15 cavans. He is hopeful the yield will further increase as he learns the finer points of modern palay farming.
Optimizing opportunity
As irrigation water is available year-round, farmers in some villages have started to plant and harvest palay five times in two years, using both native and hybrid varieties.
“There are those who are quicker to learn and optimize the opportunity,” says Mastor Diamla, a local government personnel overseeing a cluster of rice-producing villages.
“We hope the others would follow soonest so we can make the greatest benefit out of this (SPIS) investment by the local government,” Diamla adds.
Diamla explains that one challenge for the farmers is to organize their planting effort as a hedge against, among others, pests.
And because irrigation water is made to flow from one farm to another, it would be better to have farmers, especially those in contiguous clusters, to have the same farming calendar, he adds.
Related to this is the challenge of making the farmers appreciate the need to consolidate their farms. Much of palay cultivation in the town, according to Diamla, is tended on small farms that tillers own after the inherited landholdings of parents are split among their children.
Community donation
Diamla says the local government is not yet imposing an irrigation fee from the farmers, only encouraging them to give a voluntary amount for maintenance, just like they would give a zakat or donation for community charity. “We will help the farmers overcome their burden first.”
Taraka’s SPIS program is helping some former combatants of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which forged a peace deal with the government in 2014, transition to productive civilian life.
Omar Manonggiring, 60, who leads a brigade under the MILF’s 103rd Base Command, says six of his subordinates are enjoying the new opportunity for earning more through rice farming.
As rice farming picked up in the town in the last four years, the Department of Agriculture gave to the local government a P17-million rice processing system, equipped with mechanized dryer and miller. The dryer has a 6-ton capacity while the miller has a 1.5-ton input capable of processing the produce of up to 1,300 ha of palay farms at a given time, benefiting close to 1,000 farmers.
Side by side with pumping irrigation water to the farms, the local government has developed a solar power-driven potable water system that can be distributed to the town’s households.
With solar energy, Taraka River fueled the rise to modernity of Lanao del Sur’s oldest town.
