PH – Where Are The Small Farmers & Small Journalists?

The above image is the cover of the book Focus On The Small Farmer with the subtitle Proceedings Of The Seminar-Workshop On Coconut-Based Farming Systems Research & Development Thrusts, Cebu City 19-20 September 1985, published January 1986 by the Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute, FSSRI, of UP Los Baños, and edited by Frank A Hilario, who also typed & retyped all the pages that went to press – Hiyas Press if I remember right – using an IBM Selectric III typewriter with interchangeable balls. I must tell you I proofread each page exactly 9 times – I was counting. I wanted it perfect. The title is mine. The book is 140 pages total including covers, set in 10 pt Times Roman, so how many pages was that in the original typewritten copy? It was hard work, but I have never been anyone to shirk hard work when it comes to communication for the public good. 

When the book came out, I said to myself, "There must be a better way to produce a book!" Faster, less exhausting, and more accurate. And there it was – I saw a personal computer in the office of the secretary of FSSRI Director Elpidio "Pids" L Rosario. I asked Pids to tell the girl to teach me, and he did. And that is how I learned to use the PC with WordStar 1 as the application, app. I remember the exact date when I began my WordStar lessons: 28 December 1985, Innocents Day.

If you have not guessed by now, there are 2 lessons I am about to teach any aggie journalist out there:

(1)   Learning to use PC apps for information & communication technology, ICT, projects & activities

(2)   Focusing on small farmers.

In ICT, I notice that even the award-winning journalists who are members of the association Philippine Agricultural Journalists, PAJ, are neither here nor there. I've never heard PAJ being productive in ICT either. PAJ is not focused on the small farmer.

Our aggie journalists are still practicing their century-old art of reporting the Who, What, Where, When, How and an occasional Why, and are not concerned with inclusive market-oriented development, IMOD, the philosophy espoused by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, based in India, when William Dar was Director General from January 2000 to December 2014, when ICRISAT had me as international consulting writer. Under ICRISAT's IMOD, which came out with a no-nonsense 4-color 40-page publication called Inclusive Market-Oriented Development Annual Report 2010:

Inclusive means the poor farmers are part of the working system.
Market-oriented means farming goes from seeding to selling, field to fork.
Development means whole villages are targets of economic growth.
No one left behind, in poverty. Walang iwanan – awan mabati.

In his introduction to the IMOD Report, Mr Dar quoted Adam Smith, a pioneer of political economy (1723-1790), as saying, "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."

How can our aggie journalists sleep at night notthinking these thoughts!?517