ABSTRACT
The Batak have generally been portrayed as the last hunter-gatherers of the Philippines and their rice-related knowledge has often gone unnoticed. This chapter introduces specific aspects of Batak farming knowledge, especially those related to local terms for different stages of rice growth, rice partonomy and morphology, and classification of soil and tree zones and types of fallow vegetation. It provides some sign of trends in Batak rice yields and subsistence strategies from the early 1980s to the present time. The chapter examines how national and local politics have had, and continue to have, the strongest bearing on everything happening in and around Batak swiddens. Surprisingly, Batak dependency on agriculture and the antiquity of their swidden cultivation practices are not mentioned. The chapter intends to give a chronological assessment of Batak responses to the dramatic changes that have confronted them between the 1980s and the years since 2000.
