VICKY CARLOS GARCIA strolls into the vast, dark wood lobby of the Manila Hotel, a slight drag on one leg. The white hotel on Manila’s harbor was General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters in the 1930s. His rooms are now a museum.
Garcia smiles as she passes a gingerbread house and a stand of fake pine trees rising from wads of cotton snow. It’s late November and steamy hot outside. Inside the air-conditioned lobby, a pianist jazz-riffs languidly. American Christmas songs echo off twenty-foot ceilings. Garcia gestures up at the beams. “The high ceilings are from the Spanish,” she says. “Almost everything else here is from the Americans.”1
A survivor of childhood polio, Garcia is raising funds for a hip replacement. “I grew up in a poor family, one of ten children. There was no money for polio care.” She’s been in pain since then. But she has never let that stop her. Garcia has long been a woman on a mission.
Since 2006, Vicky Carlos Garcia has made the same journey again and again, riding fourteen hours on buses, “jeepneys” (open-air mass transit), and jeeps to remote mountain communities in northern Luzon—the largest Philippine island. Sparsely populated by indigenous farming communities, the area is known as the Cordillera. After the last jeep stop, it is a long hike to villages of brightly colored multistory buildings set amid two-thousand-year-old rice terraces. “It’s difficult to understand how isolated these communities are,” she says, gesturing. “On a mountain called Sleeping Beauty, there is a stairway to heaven.”
Hand-carved into steep, lush mountains by ancestors of the people who now live and farm there, the Philippine terraces produce some of the most delicious rice in the world. “These terraces were built a long time ago,” one indigenous activist says, “before the time of Jesus.” They have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built of mud and stone, they capture water ingeniously, in a series of ponds laced together with elaborate irrigation canals that tap mountain rivers. Some have called the terraces “the Eighth Wonder of the World.”
Since 2006, Garcia and Montanan Mary Hensley, who first came to the Cordillera as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1970s, have been trying to help farmers revitalize their communities and preserve their way of life by marketing their heirloom rice to gourmet groceries and restaurants from Manila to Manhattan. They know it is ironic. They are tapping transnational slow-food networks to preserve ancient Cordillera farming traditions nearly destroyed by the rise of a global food economy.
Hensley believes that the “Green Revolution” that promised to modernize agriculture in poor countries instead caused the “extinction of hundreds of thousands of rice varieties. That’s not an exaggeration,” she says. “It’s just true.” The Philippines was ground zero for rice engineering, she says, home to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), founded in 1960 with grants from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. IRRI spearheaded the Green Revolution in Asia, bringing industrial agriculture to a region that had been fed by small farmers for millennia.2
The results were dramatic, but not in the way Green Revolution advocates promised. The global seed and pesticide industry pushed governments in poor nations to reject small farmers’ customary seed preservation and exchange techniques. Global lenders offered agricultural loans to poor countries if they would pass “plant variety protection” laws that gave companies like Monsanto and Syngenta intellectual property rights to bioengineered seeds. Some countries even criminalized seed banking and farmers’ seed exchanges. By 2015, five companies controlled half of the world’s seed market, giving them, activists say, “a stranglehold on the world’s pantry.”
Few small farmers could afford the costs associated with bioengineered seeds, Hensley says. Nor could they compete in price or volume with cheap, subsidized imports from the US, Thailand, and India, where rice is grown on vast industrial farms. As in Oaxaca after NAFTA, as in so many parts of Africa after the land grabs and flooding of markets with cheap, subsidized grains and produce, millions of small Asian producers were ruined.3
Farmers’ groups began to resist. “It’s a choice between abundance and scarcity,” says Indian activist Vandana Shiva, who has called for civil disobedience through continued seed exchange. Via Campesina’s Elizabeth Mpofu also has urged farmers to continue exchanging seeds, even where it is illegal. Both women argue that pursuing “food security” via industrial farming and patented seeds has increased hunger in Asia and Africa.
“The periods of starvation . . . in Africa result primarily from the restrictive trade rules that favor big corporations and prohibit the seeding of traditional, indigenous foodstuff by the small-scale farmers,” Mpofu says. In the 1960s, Africa exported food. In the twenty-first century, the continent has to import 25 percent of what its people need. Mpofu believes it could be different. So do Garcia and Hensley. In the twenty-first century, the Philippines became the world’s largest rice importer, this in a country where climate-resilient high-protein rice was pioneered millennia before IRRI.4
Rice is the most important food in the world, a staple for more than half the world’s people. It accounts for 40 percent of calories consumed in Asia, for poor people more than 50 percent. It is the fastest-growing food in Africa, where rice consumption has doubled since 1970. The same is true in the Middle East.5
Supporters of industrial rice production argue that growing global demand necessitates high-yield rice seeds and large-scale farming, and that falling rice prices help the poor and hungry. And genetically modified rice strains can address nutritional deficiencies caused by poverty, advocates insist. Since the 1990s, IRRI scientists have been working to perfect “golden rice,” a strain infused with beta-carotene. Meanwhile community activists reduced Philippine vitamin A deficiencies by helping the urban poor plant community gardens.
Because the Philippines plants more GMO crops than any other country, it is also a center of resistance. Some feel that laboratory-made seeds are endangering biodiversity. In 2013, four hundred Filipino farmers and Greenpeace activists destroyed a golden rice test plot. Scientists and journalists painted them as provincial and naive. Protesters insisted that there are serious downsides to industrial farming and GMO crops, among them the disappearance of small farms planted with diverse, unique seeds.
In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton pressured Haiti to drop tariffs on US rice in exchange for aid. Cheap American rice imports destroyed indigenous Haitian rice farms, turning a desperately poor country into a staple food importer. After the devastating 2010 earthquake, Monsanto donated GMO seeds. Haitian farmers worried they would contaminate indigenous crops. They knew they could not afford to buy new seeds each year or pay for pesticides and fertilizer. As hunger raged throughout Haiti, former President Clinton apologized for his “mistake.” In Thailand, India, and China, too, small rice growers struggle to compete with agribusiness. Even China, since 2010, has become a rice importer.6
Across Asia, heirloom rice strains disappeared, deemed too expensive to grow and not sufficiently high-yield. In the Cordillera, by the 1990s, numerous rice varieties faced extinction. Chong-ak rice, from Kalinga province, was one. A cold-tolerant rice suited to high mountains, it was a staple of the Taguibong people, served at holidays, funerals, and other ritual gatherings.
Hensley recalls other varieties from her Peace Crops days that were in danger. Tinawon and Unoy, each with an intense taste and smell, were different from any commercial rice sold in the US. Cultivating these was a sacred act. Their growth cycles defined the year for the Ifugao people, who celebrated twelve rice rituals annually to keep balance between people and the environment, water and soil, air and earth.7
Indigenous farmers practice agroecology of the most sophisticated kind, says Garcia. She believes we must look to them instead of industrial farms and agricultural engineers to strengthen global food security. She was not surprised when the 2014 UN report said the same. Instead of chemical pesticides, Cordillera farmers have always used soil conservation and herbal pest control. They were “organic before there was organic.” Garcia says she and Hensley “want to help these farmers in a cooperative way, to create an enterprise they work by themselves, so that they can make a living, sustain their lands, be able to meet their needs, and improve their quality of life.”
Cordillera rice-growing techniques were passed down through generations in ritual chants sung by old women as seeds were sown. These rice-growing experts were called “seed keepers.” Every year, they scoured the terraces to find the healthiest, hardiest, tastiest seedlings and cultivate seeds for future harvests. Over generations, the seeds they chose yielded three hundred heirloom rice varieties unique to the Cordillera.8
Rice-growing communities helped preserve Luzon’s biodiversity, says Garcia. They maintained small forests at the top of each terrace comprising hundreds of species of native plants. These filtered rainwater, replenished the soil, and supported fish, berries, mushrooms, and waterfowl. Their unique growing system allowed Cordillera communities to cultivate rice at very high altitudes, some more than three thousand feet above sea level. UNESCO designated the Cordillera a “Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Site” and the rice rituals, “Treasures of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” But it was all teetering on the brink of extinction by the 2010s, and UNESCO named the Cordillera a “World Heritage Site in Danger.”
When Garcia and Hensley began working to revitalize indigenous rice growing, Cordillera farming communities were in decline. Farmers’ children were migrating to the city. Rapid urbanization was endangering the delicate ecosystem. Between 1987 and 2007, the Philippines lost half its arable land to urbanization, extractive industries, and resorts. That doesn’t count the losses for palm oil, sugar, rubber, and banana plantations.9
The country began to plant more GMO crops than any other. The Philippine government, like many in the Global South, distributed the seeds to small farmers. Proponents argued that they would help reduce hunger. Opponents say now there was little or no increase in yield.
Either way, there were losses, activists say. Heirloom rice was high in protein. More “modern” rices were not. One indigenous journalist who returned to the Cordillera after time away found high rates of diabetes in communities where modern commercial rice had become a staple. The disease was striking people as young as thirty-five.10
Many indigenous Cordillera communities tried hard to sustain traditional ways of living. Kankanaey activist Joan Carling fought three successful battles to block World Bank-funded dams there. She also helped farmers formalize land titles. When she was bedridden with malaria, farmers trekked hours on foot to visit her. But by 2006, she had become fearful. Three activists she knew were murdered that year. Then a friend in the military told her that he had seen her name listed among “enemies of the state.” In 2008, “suspicious men on motorbikes” began following her everywhere. With regret, Carling left her home, but continued her work from Thailand.
There, Carling created the Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact, linking farm and environmental activists from the Philippines, Nepal, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, and other countries. The battle to help small farmers, feed the hungry, preserve dwindling forests, rivers, and the sea is global, she says. And indigenous people are the shepherds. “It’s part of our being to protect and conserve.”11
Indigenous farmers have long been caught in the crosswinds of violence that is not of their making, says Mary Hensley. As far back as the 1970s, Hensley remembers that “fighting between the military and Communist guerrillas left mountain villages cut off. People were suffering from iodine deficiency and severe hunger.”
While in the Peace Corps, Hensley traveled from village to village delivering iodized salt to promote healthy hormone production and fight birth defects. For years afterward, she says she was haunted by what she saw, and wondered what could be done to help these communities. In the early twenty-first century, she met Garcia, a former social worker and Philippine Labor Department official, at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. The women became friends and spent long hours talking about Hensley’s memories of the Cordillera. In 2005, they began work on a plan to market heirloom rice worldwide.
By this time, most young people were fleeing—or had fled—the Cordillera, says Garcia, hoping for an easier life in the city. The average age of Filipino farmers had risen to fifty-seven. “Young people no longer wanted to till the land and work on a farm. They abandoned their lands, settled in Manila. They wanted to have a cell phone instead of only a little shovel. They traded farm equipment for cash because they wanted nice things like anyone else.”
To aid their families, she says, many rural women went “overseas to become domestic helpers. The Philippines is the world’s number one exporter of people. Mostly women. Three Filipino families out of ten have a family member overseas. They became the lifesavers for poor people, especially in the countryside. Someone from the family sacrifices herself by going abroad. They became our heroes but at what cost?”
Like many activists in an era of involuntary migration, Garcia believes that dispersion was damaging families, that everyone should have “a right to stay home,” to make a decent living off their own lands. She and Hensley “wanted to see young farmers embrace their culture, their environment, their traditions,” Garcia says. “What would keep me here? What would make me want to stay? That’s what we asked. We thought selling heirloom rice might earn them enough that people could stay if they wanted to.”
Garcia says she also hoped to promote healthier agriculture and food systems in the Philippines. “There was no organic movement here at that time,” she says. “Our government was only into hybrid seeds. Because of our RICE [Revitalize Indigenous Cordilleran Entrepreneurs] project, all that has been turned upside down.”
There are 11.5 million Filipino families earning a living growing rice. Increasingly, they are returning to agroecology. Via Campesina, Philippines, says that pesticides have depleted the country’s rich soil. PAKISAMA, a Philippine smallholders’ confederation with a hundred thousand members in twenty-eight provinces, argues that a return to organic is the only path toward a higher yield. They are retraining farmers in eight provinces and helped pass an Organic Law in 2010 channeling government resources toward small organic farms. Agroecology is booming in the Philippines, and RICE was one of the catalysts. Garcia feels great about that.12
Organic heirloom rice brings farmers higher prices, Garcia says, and those extra few dollars “have made a difference in the lives of Cordillera farmers, improving the future for their children and their communities. This means a life that is more than mere survival. They can have more to drink than coffee with no sugar. When they cook, they can have soy sauce. They can grow greens to eat with their rice. They can afford salt, sugar, vinegar, and oil. You need all of that to be healthy.” (On the other side of the world, in Vermont, promoters of organics are making the same argument: that it will help keep struggling farmers in business.)
The heirloom rice business has helped Cordillerans educate and care for their kids too, Garcia says. “They can keep their children in school, because they have cash to pay school fees. They can buy medicine for those who are sick. And once their children are educated, they can become part of the rice marketing. They have a business of their own.”
Through the heirloom rice business, indigenous Cordillera women have become political advocates for their communities, says Hensley. They travel through Asia and Europe, connecting with other farmers and slow-food activists. They have become part of the global fight for “food sovereignty.” Each country’s citizens should control local food supplies, policies, and growing practices, they argue, not global seed and chemical companies.
Garcia’s remarkable energy helped spark a little revolution in the Cordillera, says Hensley. “I can still see her in my mind, visiting a hundred little communities, finding ways to speak to farmers in their own languages (which are different in every town). She helped them to see the benefits to developing global markets for their rice.” Each setting was different; each community reached decisions through unique processes of discussion and debate. “Vicky is an amazing facilitator,” says Hensley. “Completely dedicated to empowering local people.”
Garcia has spent her life serving Filipino workers, poor people, and children. Her personal story encapsulates the history of her country. A child of farmers and teachers, she was raised in Cavite, home of Emilio Aguinaldo, the guerrilla leader who fought for independence against the Spanish and then the Americans. “I know what it’s like to till the land and grow your own food,” she says. In a region famous for intricate embroidery, she and her sisters sold their handiwork to supplement the family harvest.
Her oldest brother worked at one of Cavite’s early garment factories, making jeans. “He was killed by the henchmen of the Marcos regime because he was organizing a union,” she says. His life and work shaped her. “Every day he came home and told me how Levi’s and Wrangler mistreated the workers,” she says. “I listened, sucked these images up. I became an activist.”
Marcos declared martial law in September 1972, Garcia recalls. “They killed my brother in February, five months later. I had to testify in court about his death. It was the scariest thing I ever did. I told nothing but the truth, so help me God. My brother was shot twenty-one times. Then he walked home so he could see my mother one more time. His will was so strong. His heart was so strong, he made it home, walking the crooked streets. Before he died he told me about the shooting. I was with him, holding him.” She was twelve.
A few weeks later, Garcia found out that her brother had made her the beneficiary of his insurance. “He thought I could make a difference, young as I was. He wanted me to finish school.” And she did. “I studied labor relations so that I could figure out what rights workers had under the law, and what rights they should have.” She felt indulgent spending days in school when her country was racked by famine and her family was living on hamburger buns and dried milk donated by the US military. But she continued, earning a master’s degree.
When Marcos fell, Garcia was a twenty-four-year-old social worker, helping street children in Manila. The commute from Cavite took hours on hot, crowded buses. She listened to “people talk about Marcos, his secret ties to the CIA, to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. I realized our government was the puppet of the Americans. In college, you study history, but here it was before my eyes. I felt I had to do something.”
The People Power revolution that brought Marcos down in 1986 sucked Garcia in. “This was my chance to be there in the streets. My friends came with me because of my physical disability. They worried I’d be in danger.” Even the memory is electric. “There were more than a million people on EDSA, Manila’s main street. From all sides, all walks of life. We closed down the streets. Neighbors came because they knew the story of my brother and because everyone was affected by Marcos. We felt maybe we can end it and we’ll have a beautiful tomorrow. Everyone was looking for a better day.”
Garcia draws in breath. “But it didn’t come.” People trusted Corazon Aquino in ways they shouldn’t have, she believes. “Everyone thought Cory was the mother of our country. So when she said we have to tighten up security, we didn’t talk back, because you don’t talk back to your mother. So the Philippines remains in turmoil to this day. We have been favored by the Americans. They use us for militarization in Asia. Their little brown brothers.” She laughs a little bitterly at the phrase used often by American colonial officials to refer to the Philippine people during the period of the American occupation, from 1901 to 1946. “And now globalization. History has changed us. We are all caught up in it.”
Garcia says her desire to help farmers stay on their land was fueled by years of working with “urban settlers” in the tin, wood, and cardboard shantytowns of Manila. “Ask them why they are there,” she commands. “Agricultural lands were converted during the Green Revolution. That was just the beginning. They’re not all there because they want to be.”
Every day Garcia walked the sprawling shack cities along the Pasig River where millions live off what they can scavenge—fast-food waste, engine parts, discarded clothing—detritus of the global economy. Everyone there is always working, she says, harder than affluent people can ever imagine. Girls and women peel garlic all day and pile it high. Women sell clothing they’ve sewn from discarded fabrics. A hundred families sleep in a stinking, hot warehouse full of fast-fashion waste. Living at the center of a steaming garbage dump, they pick through refuse all day, carefully piling and gathering usable items for resale.
That world so shocked her that she says it reset her mind. “By any other standards, I would be considered a marginal, oppressed minority. But not here. That work made me understand what it really means to have rights and privilege.”
A piece of her heart remains with the street kids. “The Philippines is number one in Asia for street children,” she says. Garcia worked “undercover” to gather evidence on sales of Filipino children. “It was my first understanding of globalization,” she says. “I thought I was taking on a few pedophiles. They were drugging children and kidnapping them. I was even drugged one time.” She came to believe that human trafficking is systemic, an integral part of the global economy. She says she expected to have to fight thugs but instead found herself fighting “the pillars of society: the police, the justice system, the schools, even the Church.”
What she saw in the streets of Manila drove her commitment to create opportunities for farmers to flourish economically and stay on their lands. “In the slums, once you’re thirty, if you don’t have a job, you probably never will. I started to think people should be able to stay on the land if they want to. That is better for many people.”
The heirloom rice project educated hundreds of Cordillera farmers and put them in control, she says. It helped to kick-start the organic movement in the Philippines. Then came the backlash. Things were going well. By 2016, Mary Hensley had found investors willing to build infrastructure that would enable RICE to expand deeper into the Cordillera, to ship new kinds of heirloom rice—especially the region’s trademark purple rice. But it was not to be.
The Philippine government began its own heirloom rice project. “They realized how lucrative it could be,” says Hensley, “and they wanted to run it.” Since the scope of the government program is large, Hensley admits, it will reach many more farmers than she and Garcia could. But since the death of a key RICE ally in government, those developing the project have shown little commitment to empowering Cordillera communities. A new generation of Cordillera activists are starting to work on that, through heirloom rice production and marketing plans of their own. It’s dangerous but potentially lucrative, and danger, they say, is part of life.
Vicky Garcia was warned in no uncertain terms to back off. She has had to take the threat seriously. She is not downhearted about it, she says. Donations from friends around the world enabled her to have her hip replaced. She lives with her adult son and the two care for each other. She feels good about what she has accomplished. And ready for the next phase of her story.
“Our history is a mix of everything you are talking about in this book. Frustrations, tragedies, and triumphs.” She looks forward to figuring out what comes next, she says, for her, and for her people. “My work is in the Philippines. But, you know, what I am experiencing is true for people all over the world. Our fight will never end.” She stands, a little shaky but firm. “And that’s OK. I have always been a fighter. I will just keep on fighting.”