Growing Together: A Regenerative Agriculture Session with Teduray Women in BARMM

AGREA Foundation and WFP convened Teduray women in BARMM for a learning session on seed banking, egg-tray propagation, nutrition, and climate-resilient farming—with mothers bringing their children.

A room with children in it

The most telling detail about the session was not on the agenda.

According to AGREA’s account, many women and new members joined the Regenerative Agriculture Learning Session with the women of Senorodoroy de Teduray Dob Fusakae Inged Women (STFI) in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Some of them were mothers who brought their children.

That is not a footnote. It is a description of how learning actually happens in communities where care responsibilities are not set aside for training days. A session designed for women who cannot leave their children at home has to be a session where children are present—and where the content is delivered in a way that survives the interruptions.

The women explored seed saving and seed banking, seedling propagation using egg trays, the connection between farming and family nutrition, climate risks and adaptation strategies, and vegetable farming fundamentals. For many, the most immediate discovery was that the materials they needed were already in their hands.

Who the Teduray are, and why Fusaka Inged matters

The Teduray are one of the major Indigenous Peoples of Mindanao, with communities concentrated in the uplands of Maguindanao. They are the largest Indigenous group in the region, with roughly 60,000 Teduray living in the uplands of Maguindanao province.

The organization’s name includes the term Fusaka Inged. In Teduray, fusaka refers to heritage—things inherited from ancestors, including land, forests, rivers, and the knowledge that comes with them. Fusaka Inged is the term used for ancestral domain: the territories historically owned and utilized by Indigenous communities, recognized under Bangsamoro law through a formal Certificate of Fusaka Inged Claim.

That framing is not incidental to an agricultural session. For Teduray women, farming is not only a livelihood. It is a practice embedded in an inherited relationship to land. A session on seed saving and soil health is, in that context, a session about how to care for something that was passed down.

Teduray women have their own traditional farming method, known as Sulagad—a centuries-old practice in Cotabato and Upi, Maguindanao del Norte, that has outlived colonial interventions. The practice involves growing root crops, rice, and fruit trees in rotation without synthetic fertilizers, and women teach it to younger women village to village.

That detail matters for how the session should be read. The women who participated were not empty vessels receiving a new technique. They were inheritors of a sophisticated system, and the session added tools and structure to what they already carried.

Seed banking: protecting what is already yours

The session’s first component was seed saving and seed banking, approached as a way to build a supply of quality seed.

The women learned to identify good seed, save it properly, and store it for future seasons. For them, seed banking was described as more than keeping seeds: it protects planting materials, reduces dependence on purchased seed, and prepares them for future seasons and unexpected challenges.

The gendered dimension of this work is documented. A 2024 submission to the UN Human Rights Council noted that rural and Indigenous women in the Philippines are “seed keepers, seed savers and knowledge holders,” yet their labour and expertise are often invisible in policy and decision-making. Research from the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development has advanced farmer seed-saving techniques and recognised that women farmers in the Philippines play a central role in climate-smart seed systems.

The practical value is direct. A farmer who saves open-pollinated seed from her healthiest plants reduces her dependence on purchased inputs and gains some control over the timing of her season. She can replant after a failed sowing without waiting for a supplier. She can share seed with a neighbour and receive it back after harvest.

Storage is where good intentions often fail. Seed must be properly dried and cooled before storage, kept in airtight containers, and labelled with variety name and harvest date. Minimising exposure to air and sunlight maintains viability. These are not advanced techniques. They are the difference between a jar of seed that germinates and one that does not.

Egg trays: a second life for a household object

The second hands-on component introduced egg trays as a propagation tool.

The method is simple and well documented. Cardboard egg cartons are pierced for drainage, filled with potting medium, and used to germinate small-seeded vegetables. When seedlings are ready to transplant, the individual cells can be cut apart and planted directly, because the cardboard breaks down in the soil without disturbing the roots.

The significance is not the egg tray itself. It is the principle: a nursery does not require purchased equipment. It requires a container with drainage, a growing medium, water, light, and attention. A household that already has egg cartons has the first of those.

For women managing small plots alongside care responsibilities, this matters. A nursery that fits on a windowsill or under a shade tree can be managed in short intervals between other tasks. It does not require a dedicated structure or an uninterrupted block of time. It scales to the space and labour available.

Nutrition: connecting the farm to the plate

The third component connected farming to family nutrition. Participants discussed diverse and balanced diets, locally available nutritious foods, household food security, and proper nutrition during pregnancy, breastfeeding, and early childhood.

This is where the term “nutrition-sensitive” earns its meaning. Nutrition-sensitive agriculture is not simply the production of nutritious food. It is the deliberate design of agricultural activity so that it improves nutrition outcomes—by diversifying what is grown, by aligning production with household dietary needs, and by ensuring that food reaches the people in the household who need it most.

The need is documented. WFP has conducted social and behaviour change communication research in Maguindanao, BARMM, to explore the socio-cultural factors contributing to poor dietary practices among women and children, and to identify the enablers and motivators that can improve those practices. The research framing acknowledges that dietary decisions are shaped by culture, cost, and custom—not only by knowledge.

A session on dietary diversity using affordable local foods is therefore not a lecture on nutrition science. It is a conversation about what is already available and how it might be combined differently. A household that grows three vegetables and eats one has a diversification opportunity that costs nothing but a change in habit.

Climate risk, soil health, and the case for diversity

The fourth component examined climate risks and practical adaptation strategies: crop selection, soil management, land preparation, and farm planning. The fifth covered vegetable farming fundamentals, biodiversity, healthy living soils, and organic and regenerative agriculture that reduces dependence on harmful chemical inputs.

The climate context in BARMM is not hypothetical. In May 2026, the Bangsamoro Government placed the entire region under a state of calamity citing the combined impact of El Niño and a global oil crisis. Around 800 rice and corn farmers in Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte had been affected, and roughly 851 hectares of farmland across 36 municipalities and 167 barangays were damaged—537 hectares of rice and 314 hectares of corn—with losses of approximately 1,500 metric tons. El Niño conditions were projected to continue into early 2027.

For upland Teduray communities, the stakes are specific. South Upi and surrounding areas are home to mixed Teduray, Moro, and non-Moro Christian communities relying mainly on upland rice varieties and hybrid corn. A farm that depends on a single water-intensive crop is a farm exposed to a single failure mode. A farm with diverse crops, healthy soil that holds moisture, and organic matter that buffers temperature extremes has more ways to absorb a bad season.

The session’s emphasis on biodiversity and living soils reflects that logic. Diversity in the field is a risk-management strategy as much as an ecological one. A garden with several crops, planted on a schedule that staggers harvests, is a household with more than one way to eat.

The partnership behind the session

The learning session is part of the continuing collaboration between AGREA Foundation and the World Food Programme, under a project funded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation.

The project—Empowering Indigenous Women through Nutrition-sensitive Interventions and Agriculture Livelihoods Support towards Improved Food and Nutrition Security and Climate Resilience—is a PHP 45 million effort (approximately USD 780,000) intended to reach 28,000 people from Indigenous and rural communities across BARMM. Its components include training rural and Indigenous women in climate-resilient agriculture and leadership, strengthening women’s cooperatives through market linkage, and incorporating social and behaviour change for nutrition.

The project’s design responds to a documented gap. A 2024 WFP study found that barriers such as climate-related risks hinder rural and Indigenous women from accessing resources and decision-making processes, resulting in lost livelihood opportunities and poverty. The project’s training components are designed to address that gap directly—not by treating women as beneficiaries of assistance, but by strengthening the capacities they already exercise.

What the session does and does not establish

A learning session is an input. It is not evidence that participants have adopted seed banking as a routine practice, that they will raise seedlings in egg trays rather than buying them, that household diets will improve, or that farms will be more resilient to the next dry spell.

Those outcomes depend on follow-through: whether the practices fit the labour and land available, whether stored seed actually germinates, whether egg trays are available in sufficient quantity, whether nutrition messages are compatible with what households can afford, and whether the organization provides reinforcement in the months after the session.

The honest measure of the training is not the number of participants or the enthusiasm in the room. It is what appears in the following season: jars of labelled seed, trays of seedlings, a garden with more than one crop in it, and a plate with more colour on it.

What comes next

For the participants, the immediate next steps are small and concrete: select and store seed from the best plants at the next harvest; try one tray of seedlings; add one vegetable to the household menu that is already available locally; and test one soil-building practice on a small plot before applying it widely.

For the organization, the next step is to decide whether these practices become shared activities—a community seed bank, a collective nursery, a group purchase of storage containers—rather than individual habits.

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

A note of appreciation

To the women of STFI who participated, and to the mothers who brought their children: the practices discussed are not new inventions, and many of you already knew them. What the session offered was a structure for doing them deliberately—and a room in which to compare notes with other women doing the same work. The children in the room were not a distraction from the learning. They were part of what the learning was for.

To learn more about AGREA Foundation’s work with Indigenous 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.