Corn Farming in Bayambang: A Brief History

Corn Farming in Bayambang

Bayambang's vast farmlands, if not planted with rice, are planted with corn.

According to Artemio Buezon, former OIC of the Municipal Agriculture Office of the local government of Bayambang, it was in the 1980s under Mayor Calixto Camacho that Bayambang was dubbed as "the cornbelt of Central Pangasinan." 

But he said that growing up as a young boy in this town, there were already corn farmers. The main variety grown at the time, however, was the white corn variety called Silangan, not the yellow corn being widely grown today for use as animal feed.

The buyers of Bayambang's yellow corn (actually red orange), Buezon said, are mostly Camiling traders, who in turn sell the corn to makers of animal feeds mostly in Pulilan, Bulacan.

Aside from eating corn as plain boiled staple of morning or afternoon snacks, locals loved to grill the white corn variety, which had a distinct flavor and even came in glutinous and non-glutinous varieties. 

A bigger-eared variety of white corn was also eaten as binatog, boiled corn kernels drizzled with salt and grated coconut. It was also made into sweet corn puffs.

Corn ears may also be toasted, broken a bit, and wrapped in balisungsong or corn-shaped paper and eaten like cornick. 

Corn was also sometimes milled into small bits and mixed with rice during lean times, when rice commanded a higher-than-usual price in the market.

Corn flour was also traditionally eaten as polvoron, toasted on an iron wok and mixed with sugar and skimmed milk, although the corn flour was reportedly bought outside of town. Toasted corn flour is also used as ingredient of the cassava delicacy called kundandit or dinekdek. Other popular corn-based snacks are ginataang mais (corn with malagkit rice cooked in coconut milk and sugar) and mais con hielo.

In the ensuing decades, the popcorn variety would arrive and thus the popularity of popcorn. And then came the advent of the Japanese sweet corn as well, eaten as corn on the cob slathered with butter, or grated and drizzled with orange cheese powder as cheese corn.

Today, a new variety of corn -- yellowish white kernels speckled with purple -- has invaded the residents' eating habits. But most of the cornfields remain to be of the yellow corn variety that are made into animal feeds.