Building on Tradition: A Regenerative Agriculture Session with the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women's Agriculture Cooperative

AGREA Foundation and WFP convened the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women's Agriculture Cooperative for a hands-on session on field layout, raised beds, and organic concoctions in BARMM.

The measure of a training

A demonstration ends when the facilitator packs up the tape. What happens next is the only thing that matters.

AGREA Foundation conducted a Regenerative Agriculture session with the women farmers of the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women's Agriculture Cooperative (KBWAC) in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. According to AGREA's account, after the demonstration, the women took the initiative to measure and organise their own farm areas. They worked collectively to prepare organic concoctions, and they listened, practised, and worked together to understand how the approaches applied to their own farms.

That sequence — demonstration, then independent application, then collective production — is the difference between a workshop and a practice. The session's content was not novel in every respect. The women brought generations of farming knowledge with them. What the session offered was a structure for doing some of it differently, and a room in which to do it together.

The timing gives the session a wider frame. The United Nations has declared 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer, with FAO coordinating activities alongside IFAD and WFP . FAO's stated aim for the year is to raise awareness of women's roles across agrifood systems and to push for action on the structural barriers they face, including limited access to land, finance, technologies, extension services, and decision-making . The theme is "Empowered women, transforming agrifood systems" .

A session on field measurement and fermented plant juice is a small thing against that agenda. But the year's ambitions are realised, or not, at the level of a staked plot and a labelled jar.

Where the session sits within the programme

The session is part of the continuing collaboration between AGREA Foundation and the World Food Programme, under a project whose full title is Empowering Indigenous Women through Nutrition-sensitive Interventions and Agriculture Livelihoods Support towards Improved Food and Nutrition Security and Climate Resilience.

WFP describes the project as a PHP 45 million (US$780,000) contribution from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, intended to enhance agriculture-related livelihoods and boost the climate resilience of indigenous women in BARMM, reaching 28,000 people from indigenous and rural communities . Under it, rural and indigenous women undergo training in climate-resilient agriculture and leadership skills, women's cooperatives are strengthened by linking their agricultural production to reliable markets, and activities incorporate social and behaviour change to improve local food and nutrition practices .

The rationale is stated directly in WFP's announcement. Violeta Dominguez Acosta, Head of Spanish Cooperation in the Philippines, said: "If we are talking about climate resilience in a country most at risk of extreme climate, we must put indigenous women and their communities at the centre of the action" . WFP Philippines Representative and Country Director Regis Chapman added: "With the increasing frequency and intensity of climate emergencies in the Philippines, women are especially vulnerable. It is urgent that we strengthen their capacities and so that they can withstand shocks better" .

The project's diagnosis rests on WFP's 2024 Leaving No One Behind study, which found that barriers such as climate-related risks hinder rural and indigenous women from accessing resources and decision-making processes, resulting in the loss of livelihood opportunities and poverty .

Field layout: making the plan visible

The first hands-on component was field layout and land preparation. The women measured and organised their own farm areas after the demonstration, applying what they had seen to ground they actually work.

The case for measuring before planting is practical. Published guidance on vegetable production describes low raised beds constructed with footpaths between each bed, designed to provide access to the crop plants and adequate drainage. In field trials, that layout provided effective drainage during heavy rainstorms, with excess water running off along the footpaths between beds and into drainage channels or farm sumps.

The design logic is simple and consequential. A bed about a metre wide can be reached from both sides without stepping on it, which prevents the soil compaction that comes from walking on beds. A path between beds carries foot traffic and, when the soil is heavy or the ground slopes, carries excess water away. A bed that drains is a bed where a crop does not rot after heavy rain. A path that channels water is a path that does not become a trench.

Crop spacing was part of the same lesson. Published Philippine spacing tables give the range: cabbage at 30 centimetres by 30 centimetres in double rows, snap beans and peas at 20 centimetres by 20 centimetres with two seeds per hill, and wider distances for fruit-bearing crops. The differences reflect the size of the mature plant, its root spread, and how much light and airflow it needs. Spacing determines humidity in the canopy and therefore disease pressure. It determines whether a farmer can walk through the plot to weed, water, and harvest. And it determines how many plants a given area can support, which is ultimately a question about yield.

Four sections, four crop groups

The session also introduced crop rotation through a four-part division of the field: legumes, root crops, leafy vegetables, and fruit-bearing crops.

That division follows established practice. Benguet State University's guidance on farm planning and organic agriculture management recommends planting four categories of vegetables in a bed — leafy, root, legume, and fruit — and rotating each category to a different subdivision of the bed every season. The logic is agronomic. Legumes fix nitrogen through their root nodules, leaving the soil richer than they found it. Leafy vegetables are heavy nitrogen users that draw on what the legumes left behind. Root crops feed at different depths and tolerate poorer conditions. Fruit-bearing crops are heavier feeders with longer seasons and are often the group most vulnerable to soil-borne disease when planted in the same spot repeatedly.

The rotation is a framework rather than a fixed rule. Published accounts of Philippine vegetable farms note that rotation patterns vary according to soil conditions, market demand, and labour availability. The session's group activity — with members working through the sequence together — appears designed to make the reasoning concrete rather than to deliver a formula to be memorised.

Concoctions: inputs from materials already at hand

The third component was the preparation of three natural farm inputs: Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ), Fermented Fruit Juice (FFJ), and Oriental Herbal Nutrient (OHN).

These are established preparations within the Department of Agriculture's Natural Farming Technology System, which documents OHN alongside Indigenous Micro-Organisms, FPJ, FFJ, fish amino acid, and calcium phosphate as components of the system .

The Department of Agriculture's OHN formulation is specific. The first fermentation uses one kilogram each of ginger and garlic with 400 grams of molasses and 2.4 litres of coconut vinegar; a second and third extraction add chili and makabuhay . The documented benefits are pest, worm, and fungus control, support for animal skin health, and contribution to soil and plant condition . The recommended application is two tablespoons per litre of water, sprayed on leaves or poured at the base of the plant, in the early morning or late afternoon . FPJ and FFJ follow the same fermentation logic with plant trimmings and overripe fruit respectively.

The economic logic is what makes these preparations relevant to a women's cooperative. A farmer who buys synthetic fertiliser and pesticide every season must find the cash before the harvest arrives. A farmer who can produce inputs from materials already at hand — vegetable trimmings, overripe fruit, ginger, garlic, chili — has reduced that cash requirement. She has also reduced her exposure to price movements in external inputs, which in BARMM in early 2026 meant diesel rising by as much as ₱11.88 per litre and gasoline by ₱6.47 per litre in March alone .

According to AGREA's account, the women worked collectively to prepare the concoctions and are excited to eventually use these natural inputs in their own fields. That is an intention, not yet a result. It is the kind of intention that a season will test.

Why the session matters now

The session's emphasis on field planning and locally produced inputs is not happening in a neutral season.

On May 14, 2026, Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua placed the entire Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao under a state of calamity under Proclamation No. 0002, Series of 2026, citing the combined impact of the global oil crisis and the El Niño phenomenon . The proclamation noted that El Niño conditions were projected to continue until early 2027 .

According to Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Agrarian Reform Minister Abunawas Maslamama, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation had already affected around 800 rice and corn farmers in Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte. As of April 24, about 851 hectares of farmland across 36 municipalities and 167 barangays were damaged — 537 hectares of rice and 314 hectares of corn — with losses of roughly 1,500 metric tons.

In that context, a field that is measured and laid out to drain, and a farm that produces its own inputs from local materials, are not stylistic preferences. They are practical measures that spread risk and reduce exposure to purchased inputs whose prices are set elsewhere. They do not make a farm immune to drought. They do reduce the number of ways a season can go wrong.

What the session does and does not establish

A learning session is an input. It is not evidence that the women have reorganised their fields, that they will maintain a rotation, that the concoctions will be prepared correctly and applied at the right concentration, that yields will increase, or that their farms will withstand the next dry spell.

Those outcomes depend on follow-through: whether the layouts fit the land and water available, whether the rotation can be sustained when a household needs a particular crop at a particular time, whether the concoction materials remain accessible through the year, and whether the cooperative reinforces the practices in the months after the session.

The honest measure is not the enthusiasm in the room. It is what appears in the following season: a plot staked into sections, beds that drain after heavy rain, jars of fermenting preparation labelled with dates on a shelf, and a field managed according to a plan rather than improvised.

What comes next

For the participants, the next steps are concrete: stake one plot into sections before the next planting; record which crop group went where so the rotation can be repeated and adjusted; prepare one concoction, label it with the date, and observe the result on a small area before applying it widely; and check after the first heavy rain whether the pathways are carrying water away from the beds rather than into them.

For the cooperative, the next step is to decide whether these practices become shared activities — a communal demonstration plot, a shared production area for concoctions, a schedule for preparing inputs together — rather than individual habits.

For AGREA Foundation and WFP, the next step is to continue the collaboration and track whether the sessions contribute to changes in practice. That tracking should be honest about what changes and what does not.

A note of appreciation

To the women of the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women's Agriculture Cooperative who measured their own land, built the beds, and mixed the preparations together: the knowledge you brought to the session is older than anything a trainer could introduce. What the session offered was a way to add to it without setting it aside. That is how farming improves — not by starting over, but by building on what already works.

To learn more about AGREA Foundation's work with women farmers in BARMM and its partnership with the World Food Programme, explore our official channels. Organisations interested in supporting regenerative agriculture and nutrition programming can reach out through our contact page.