My family has a long history of being minor food producers. My grandmother herself has raised chicken and pigs in Manila. She also tells me stories of how she has seen some of my relatives use dynamite to catch fish. That was a relevation! Too, my grandmother has visited my father's family home on occasion. This is relevant in that my father's family owns a large lantation in the Philippines. The plantation is in the Kequezon Province. My grandmother described it as a beautiful area; mountainous terrain which leads down into the Pacific. More about the plantation later.
My grandmother has also told me of the famed rice terraces in our country, which she says are among the wonders of the world. I have seen some of these terraces in a picture book about the Philippines. They are set in the sides of mountains and they do seem to be pretty amazing given the low technological level used to create them. The stories she tells about my home country are that of an amazing paradise,rich in soil and variety of natural vegtables and fruits.
Food is mostly produced on farms or plantations and bought into the major cities. There, in the major cities, the food is distributed much as it is in the United States, through supermarkets. The farms and plantations themselves are almost self-sustaining, requiring only supplemental vegtables and other products which are not grown on the farm or plantation. That the methods of agriculuture are so similar to those in the United States (the difference being that the staple crops tend to be cash crops of bananas,cocconuts, and other exotic fruits instead of cotton, tobbacco, etc) should not be suprising because we were an American colony for so long.
I also talked with my father about his boyhood, about his time on the plantation. I don't usually talk with my father about the Philippines because there is so much else to talk about (my father is a physical therapist and I am a physical therapist assistant [suprise, I work in our clinic with him]). Tonight I talked with him about life on the plantation. He describes it as a typical type of farm which you would imagine, but growing a variety of different plants not available here in the U.S. He said the main crop was coccunut which was harvested mainly for its oil, which is called copra. Yet, if anyone who has eaten the meat of a young and tender coccunut would agree, the best part is sweet and succulunt inside. Too, they grew jackfruit, another exotic and sweet tasting fruit. Bananas were also grown. Along with the fruits and vegtables grown on the plantation, animals both wild and domesticated were utilized as both sources of labor and food. Carribou, our version of the plow horse, provided milk, meat, and was a work horse during planting. Chicken and pigs too, were grown and eaten. My father also told me a story of harvesting shrip from the river. You'd catch them under rocks with just your hand.
Thus the plantation of my father's boyhood was a place rich in environmental beauty and productivity. Yet he also tells me the surrounding rain forest which existed while he was a child was destroyed forever by the Japanese military during the occupation of WWII and collaborating Filippinos. So while the productivity of the plantation might still exist today, the surrounding habitat was marred by Man.