Laoag’s flower farm and KWF poetry: two ways to grow

When idle land meets ambition, and when verses finally get their purse.

A vacant lot doesn’t stay vacant forever — someone eventually decides what it’s worth. In Barangay 30 Suyo in Laoag, the answer was flowers, tourists, and a bet that people would pay to see what grows when a community stops waiting for someone else to develop their land.

What Bloomed in Laoag

The village transformed unused parcels into an agro-tourism flower farm, the kind of project that sounds modest on paper but signals something larger in practice. Residents didn’t wait for a congressman’s ribbon-cutting or a foreign investor’s feasibility study. They planted, they opened the gates, and they’re now counting visitors instead of waiting for remittances to fill the gap.

Agro-tourism has become the polite term for what used to be called “making do with what you have.” But when it works, it works because it answers a specific hunger: city people want to see something grow that isn’t a condo tower, and rural communities want income that doesn’t require leaving home. Laoag’s flower farm sits at that intersection. It’s not Baguio’s Burnham Park, but it doesn’t need to be — it just needs to be worth the trip from the town proper, and apparently, it is.

The model isn’t new. Benguet has strawberry fields, Bukidnon has pineapple tours, and nearly every province has tried some version of “come see our thing.” What makes this one worth noting is the scale: barangay-level, community-driven, low-cost enough that failure wouldn’t ruin anyone. That’s replicable. That’s the part other villages will quietly study.

When Poetry Becomes a Paycheck

Meanwhile, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino announced new poetry contests, the kind that come with actual prize money and the implicit promise that someone in government still thinks verse matters. For writers who’ve spent years posting on Facebook for likes and the occasional “sana all,” a formal contest with a named jury and a cash prize feels like validation that doesn’t require a book deal or a university post.

KWF’s contests have historically leaned academic — the kind of Filipino that gets workshopped in Diliman, not the kind that gets shouted at a spoken word night in Cubao. But poetry, kung tutuusin, doesn’t care where it’s born. A good line works whether it’s submitted on bond paper or thumbed into a Notes app at 2 a.m.

The question is reach. Do working-class poets — the ones writing between shifts, the OFWs scribbling in break rooms — even know these contests exist? Or do the same names keep winning because they’re the only ones who see the call for entries?

Still, a contest is better than silence. And prize money, however modest, is better than exposure.

What Both Stories Share

Laoag’s flower farm and KWF’s poetry contests are both about taking what’s underused — land, language — and deciding it’s worth cultivating. One is economic, the other cultural, but the impulse is the same: stop waiting for permission, start building with what’s already there.

The flower farm will succeed if it becomes a weekend habit for families within driving distance. The poetry contests will succeed if they surface voices that wouldn’t otherwise be heard, and if the prize money actually lands in the hands of writers who need it, not just those who already have tenure.

Both are small moves. But small moves, repeated across enough barangays and enough contests, start to look like a pattern. And patterns, eventually, become policy — or at least, they become proof that something else is possible.

Editor’s Take

It’s easy to romanticize both stories — the plucky village, the noble poet — but the real test is whether they scale or stall. Laoag’s flowers will need consistent visitors, not just opening-day crowds. KWF’s contests will need to reach beyond the usual circles, or they’ll just be another prize for people who already have platforms. What matters is whether these efforts create pathways for others, or whether they remain one-offs we applaud and forget. The difference between inspiration and infrastructure is repetition.

Sources
Laoag village transforms idle lots into agro-tourism flower farm — Inquirer
In the mood for poetry? Join these KWF poetry contests — Rappler