Wake up, PH Media, Farmer Leaders – Support The New DA, Not The Old Farmers!

Since time immemorial, 

you have been busy
Accentuating the negative.
Attenuating the positive!

Positive: To accentuate is to rub on to a bright polish.
Negative: To attenuate is to rub off the bright polish!

Old habits die hard. We have been warned by Gandhi: "Your habits become your values / Your values become your destiny."

Our mass media & leadership habits are why PH Agriculture has not emancipated the farmers from poverty!

Our newspaper columnists in their mother papers and farmer leaders on Facebook continue their old habits of informing on the negative and ignoring the positive.

Like today, Monday, 23 September 2019:

Ben Kritz:"Govt Losing The Game Of Rice – The Manila Times" posted by Leonardo Montemayor on Facebook.

Rappler: "Local Rice Farmers Are Suffering And Are On The Losing End Since The Implementation Of The Rice Tariffication Law." Posted by Rappler on Facebook.

My points exactly! This agriculturist knows farmers have been suffering even years before the Rice Tariffication Law because they religiously:

(1) insist on problematic technologies to grow crops.

(2) borrow from usurers.

(3) rely on merchants to sell their palay.

So, do not support the farmers!

Instead, support the new DA because it knows how to support the farmers all the way to Masaganang Ani At Malaki Ang Kita (plenteous produce, plentiful profits, my translation) in ways – plural – you do not know!

PH media and farmer leaders must now play their new but different roles when it comes to farmers, and not only rice farmers.

They must support The Eight Paradigms that the new Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie is proselytizing to bring about a new age for PH Agriculture!

Those paradigms are:

(1) Modernization must continue.

(2) Industrialization of Agriculture is the key.

(3) Promotion of export is a necessity.

(4) Consolidation of small- and medium-size farms.

(5) Infrastructure development should also be critical.

(6) Higher budget and investment for Philippine agriculture.

(7) Legislative support is needed.

(8) Roadmap development is paramount.

(Meanwhile, entertain yourself! The lower half of the composite image above is the cover of my ebook in Paradigms Lost, in Paradigms Regained, 269 pages, my literary-literal explanation and exposition of Mr Dar's "Eight Paradigms" embodied in his "New Thinking for Agriculture" as his roadbook (my term) to the new PH Agriculture under him as new Secretary of Agriculture. Email me for a free copy: frankahilario@gmail.com.)

If you want to support the farmers, support the new DA instead – because the farmers are religiously not supporting themselves! (Read again my listing above).

In his speech on Farmer's Day on 21 May 1982 (no title, officialgazette.gov.ph), President Ferdinand Marcos said (my translation):

We are listening to the requests of farmers that government take steps to solve the problem of income getting smaller amid production costs getting bigger.

2019-1982 equals 37 years at least that our farmers have been suffering! FM said: "The welfare of the farmers is the welfare of the people."

PH media and farmer leaders, we must learn – because our farmers have notlearned!@517