You know the coconut farmers are the poorest of Filipino farming communities. And they themselves know that; Danny Carranza, a member of the Katarungangroup, says so, says Madelaine B Miraflor(25 October 2020, “Coconut Farmers Are Poorest Agri People[1],” MB.com.ph): “Carranza blamed the coconut farmers’ poverty on the low copra prices, inability to intercrop and modernize.”
This time I am not discussing who is to blame for whose poverty; instead, I want to excite the poor farmers from Aparri to Zamboanga to excite themselves to get their families out of the poverty trap!
How? Look at the above images again:
We will make the poor coconut families enjoy their lives via Facebook! Let me tell you how we will do it without spending a single peso of our own, but of theirs.
Know then, if you don’t know yet, a news release from the Department of Agriculture(DA) says President Rodrigo Dutertesigned last Friday, 26 February, RA 11524, the Coconut Farmers and Industry Trust Fund Act, and Secretary of Agriculture William Dar said that “the law will pave way for the efficient use of the multi-billion-peso coconut levy to uplift the (lives) of millions of farmers and sustain the development of the country’s coconut industry.”
RA 11524 provides for a 50-year trust fund. There is a management committee (Mancom) composed of representatives of the Department of Finance, Department of Budget Management, and Department of Justice. Says the DA news release:
The (Mancom) is tasked to set investment priorities, investment themes, asset allocation and policies; evaluate assets; issue guidelines for portfolio turnover and (Mancom) expenses…and approve financial requirements.
Such power! Now, let us test the will of those top-management people in enriching the coconut farmers in the Philippines. Let the workings of RA 11524 come up with funds so that:
With gifts of 1 laptop and 4 cellphones and some training, each registered coconut farmer family is transformed into delighted Facebook Families!
The laptop will be shared by the father and mother; the cellphones will be distributed among the children. Facebook away!
To keep the spirit of this exercise in fertility, those laptops and cellphones can neither be sold, pawned, nor exchanged for anything, not even food.
Remember: Those families are actually the owners of the coconut levy fund, the source of the money to buy those hardware. So, what we are gifting them are actually their own money, but which they cannot get hold of otherwise.
With Facebook, the family will learn to love life and enjoy it more, even if poor. And this will motivate them to think of how coconut families can enrich their members. So, now they will listen when we agriculturists tell them to practice such as:
(1) Multiple cropping – interplanting coconut groves with high-value vegetable crops
(2) Value adding – producing virgin coconut oil
(3) Changing varieties – planting high-yielding varieties.
Truly then, the poor farmers we shall notalways have with us!@517
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