Stories by Mike Comerford
Photographs by Mark Welsh
Daily Herald Staff
Last of five parts

Larry Dulce, 43, plants rice by hand in his field north of Manila. It is back-bending work, but he was forced to go to the fields a year ago when he lost his job at a Baguio bank.

BENGUET PROVINCE, Philippines — Larry Dulce was a banker last year in Baguio, in northern Luzon, north of Manila.

On this day, he's barefoot, up to his knees in mud and bending low to plant rice.

"Because of this (economic) crisis, they let me go, so I thought, I'll try this," said Dulce, a 43-year-old father of four who likely is one of many Filipinos who have had to find entirely different ways of supporting their families.

Historically, the Philippines was an agricultural-based country, growing maize, rice, tobacco and sugar. Fishing was another traditional occupation.

These days, agriculture is just 14 percent of the economy, while it employs 40 percent of the country's work force.

The average plantation laborer working six days a week will earn slightly more than $40 a month, according to the Philippine Board of Investment, a government agency.

At a factory such as Elgin-based Middleby's site, which manufactures restaurant kitchen equipment outside Manila, the average worker would earn $160 a month working five days a week, along with subsidized rice allocations and transportation.

Dulce gets to the fields about 6 a.m. and works until mid-afternoon in the hot, humid, muddy fields.

In three or four months, he'll be able to pull the rice plants from the mud. A fan usually is used to separate the stalks from the grain. The rice grains are then dried in the sun, sometimes on the side of a concrete road. When it's ready, the rice is brought to a mill.

It is a subsistence living for tenant farmers like Dulce. Fifteen children in his extended family will eat from the rice he raises in this 10-acre field.

The Philippines gets an average of 20 typhoons a year. So far, Dulce has been lucky, the typhoons have missed his rice fields. Two devastating typhoons in November killed more than 1,000 and affected 800,000 people living in southern Luzon.

"If the crop's no good, we suffer a hardship and we have to borrow from others," he says.

Dulce was raised farming rice, he says, and doesn't mind the work.

"I daydream too much out here," he says, planting as he speaks. "It's like exercise … yes, my back hurts ... but after planting, the gin will reduce the pain in our backs."

IN PART 5:
• Ferdie's full house
• A look at life in the red-light district
• A banker is forced to try farming
• More photos from part 5