Isulan, Sultan Kudarat – Teng Andal grew up in the village of Bual in this town seeing a plywood vandal that said “place of no return”. Now 51 and a barangay kagawad, he said he has witnessed the transformation of their once perilous place into a “zone of peace.”

Andal said living in the village before was a risky venture, but not because of frequent armed encounters.

“Residents, especially farmers, refuse to live along this area because the road is unreliable. It was pockmarked and muddy that at one time, an engineer surveying the road got stuck waist-deep in the quicksand-like earth.”

When it can be used, only carabaos with makeshift carriages locally known as “karo” can pass through, he said.

“Budlay” (Ilonggo for difficult) is what Andal and other residents, mostly Ilonggos and Maguindanaon, are quick to say when asked of the situation before.

“I have been a farmer here since 1976 but we had our farm in the other area (of the barangay) because it was difficult to transport our rice produce,” resident farmer Punsay Angeles said.

He said that farmers here would spend around P30 for hauling fee just to deliver their produce to the market.

For some, like Unsay Masla who is also a rice farmer and lives in the next barangay of Lagandang but passes through the same road, the cost is higher at P50.

“Before when there was no road there yet, we have to go around another route to take us to the junction where our produce can be transported to the market,” he said.

He added that travel time has been reduced from 30 minutes to 15 minutes coming from the Bual FMR-provincial road junction to the town center, which is about 12 kilometers.

But with the concreting of a 1.4-kilometer road section of the Bual-Talitay farm-to-market road (FMR) under the Department of Agriculture’s Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP), residents said their burden has been abated, with some farmers relocating nearer to their farms along the road. The FMR project costs P16 million.

“It has become convenient for us now. The hauling fee has been reduced to P10 to none at all, especially if delivery trucks would come to collect the produce themselves,” Angeles said.

Because of the concreted road, some farmers have also expanded production areas. “We have expanded our rice area from 3 to 4 hectares,” said Evangeline Cruz, whose rice farm is located just near the concreted road section.

She added that residents and students have also enjoyed the benefits of the new road. “This has also helped our students here who would just walk to school before but now motorcycles can fetch them,” she said.

Electricity in their area also came with the road project, according to Andal. Once the concreting of the road started, barangay officials lobbied for the electrification of that portion of the barangay.

“Now, we hope that other projects and development can enter this place,” he said.

The Bual-Talitay, along with two other FMR projects in Isulan, Sultan Kudarat – the 1.2-kilometer Tayugo-Paladong FMR and 1.8-kilometer Purok 2-San Martin FMR in two other barangays – are the first infrastructure projects that have been completed under PRDP and has been operational for a year.

“The FMR projects from PRDP really help a lot of farmers in our town with better income as transportation has been easier, faster and cheaper,” former Isulan Mayor Diosdado Pallasigue said.

He added that the PRDP FMR projects opened up additional 1,000 hectares of productive rice field. (Jay M. Rosas/PRDP Mindanao)

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