As an Ancient Way of Life Crumbles...Farmers Turn to a New Craft (int'l edition)

Catalina Batton is no stranger to back-breaking work. During planting season, the frail-looking Batton hikes to the rice paddies carved across the steep, lush mountains near her town in the highlands of the northern Philippines to stick seedlings into the muddy soil. Later, she helps with the harvest. Batton figures she's about 68, and here in Ifugao Province, it's not unusual for people her age to work the paddies. In fact, the elderly now do the bulk of the work, as young people forsake farming. ''When we die, who's going to do it?'' Batton asks.

It's a worrisome question, because the flight from the land has baleful consequences. The Ifugaos, as the people here are called, farm family-owned, steplike pond terraces--engineering marvels built more than 2,000 years ago. Every stage of the ecologically attuned cultivation is attended by ritual, and the rice culture permeates every aspect of life. The terraces, which cover more than 400 square kilometers in Ifugao and neighboring provinces, are among the most extensive in the world and have been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site. They are also one of the Philippines' top tourist draws. Now the terraces are deteriorating, with some 30% damaged or no longer in use.

The reasons are easy to understand: Farming simply doesn't pay, and alternatives are numerous. It's hard to figure out how to reverse the process. ''The average yield would support a family of five for maybe three months,'' says Juan B. Dait Jr., head of the Ifugao Rice Terraces Commission, based in Baguio City. For Batton and her husband, the rewards are even slimmer. They no longer own paddies, working instead on a few held by others for a 50% share of the harvest--enough for just two months' rice supply, she says.

Banaue, the town where the Battons live, is the province's tourism hub. Every vantage point affords breathtaking views. But it's also here that the terraces are most neglected. The buses that ply the winding roads to bring visitors to this town of 20,500 also take locals to work the mines in Baguio City, 210 km away, or even to jobs in Manila, 350 km distant. Inns bustle with guests, and shops crammed with antiques and handicrafts stay open late into the night. ''The tourists come because of the terraces,'' says Henry Ottley Beyer, a primitive-arts dealer. ''But the ones who benefit from tourism aren't the farmers.''

BANANA BARK. John Wesley Dulawan, Banaue's mayor, hopes to correct that with a $1-a-day fee added to hotel bills, putting the money into a fund for terrace preservation. The government in Manila has taken notice. But with the economy still recovering from the 1997 financial crisis, officials can offer little beyond exhortation and encouragement. For example, Manila earmarked only $210,500 for repairing the terraces' extensive banana-bark-and-log irrigation systems.

Not everyone is convinced the terraces should be saved--at least not at the cost of a better standard of living. ''So what if the terraces are deteriorating if the people leave for better jobs, a better way of life?'' asks Linda Dait, Juan's wife and an officer of the Tribal Communities Assn., an advocacy group for indigenous peoples. ''It's unfair to insist that [farmers] stay there.''

From the village of Bay-angan, Noel Balenga looks across Banaue to the mountains behind it, where some of the 30 or so paddies he owns with his three brothers are located. Despite the relative wealth such a holding represents, the 39-year-old Balenga, a father of four, doesn't depend on farming for his living: He is part of Ifugao's growing wood-carving industry. Drive through villages, and chances are you'll see life-size cigar-store Indians standing in more than one backyard. Ifugao's versatile artists ship such kitsch by the container-load to Hawaii and the American Southwest, as well as Japan and Europe.

Balenga's output is more upscale--Brancusi-like furniture and Ifugao art reproductions, which he sells to Manila decorators and exporters. A fifth-grade dropout, he earns up to $140,000 in a good year--this in a country where the average annual family income is $3,300. He doesn't work his terraces, but hires others to do the farming. The yield helps, he says, but with woodcarving, ''I can send my children to college.'' As long as the Ifugaos face this kind of choice, saving the terraces will be an uphill fight.

By Lourdes Lee Valeriano in Ifugao