Hungos: Traditional Cooperative Work Advances Good Agriculture
By Roy Joseph Balane, ICRAF-Bohol

We Filipinos are proud of our traditional practice of helping one another, bayanihan as it is called. When it comes to farming, this tradition has had many names as it is practiced in many provinces in the rural countryside. Alayon, ayon, hunglos or hungos — these monikers are but a few among many.

Hungos is simple. A group of farmers in the community agrees to help each other on various farming activities – clearing, plowing, furrowing and planting, everyone working on the farm of one member at a time. This practice has developed out of their common need for additional farm labor that they cannot generate from within the family, and hired labor is basically too expensive for them to afford. These are informal, loosely organized groups of farmers in which a member may cut his or her membership anytime they see that they no longer benefit from the group’s undertakings.

In Bohol, these groups played a vital role in popularizing landcare practices on farms as technologies adopted by any one member of the group easily gets noticed by the rest as they work on that particular farm where the technology or practice is being performed or implemented. Free flowing discussions of new information among farmers become very valuable facilities of rapid technology diffusion. Moreover, recommended technologies are enhanced when these get adopted and effectively integrated to established farming practices. The evidence of potential benefits from the recommended technologies, evident in the particular farm where they are practiced, compounded with peer pressure from fellow farmers entices many members to replicate the process in their respective farms.

The sense of having contributed insights in the development of the technology encourages each of the group members to promote their initiative to others. Oftentimes, bigger farmers who can afford the frugal daily labor rate hire a hungos group. The establishment of erosion barriers, for instance, gets easily discussed along with the terms of work compensation and schedule. This seemingly simple conversations actually characterize the multiplier effect that occurs as technologies familiar to a number of farmers and adopters get inadvertently spread through word of mouth.

In the rural communities of the Philippines, one farmer can hardly keep secrets from others, especially with farming techniques. Whenever one grows an exceptionally good crop, or is performing unusual methods in field preparation, other farmers in the community easily gets wind of such developments.

At first, a farmer will observe from a distance and examine the modifications being put up in a neighboring lot. The interest of learning and improving his production pushes the farmer to probe further and to ask the innovator about the new technology – its purpose, the methodologies and the cost. The particular technology then easily gets adopted once it fits within the interest and capacity of the farmer.

The hungos groups serve a variety of important roles in landcare – from initiators to innovators, from practitioners to promoters. They serve as models for other farmers in technology development and in advancing good agriculture.