On Facebook, somebody asks something like, “If you had a choice, what would you like to eat all the time?” And my reply is, “Pork barbecue.”
When I was that high, my mother Baket Satur used to raise half-breed pigs, but she always sold them; she never raised one animal for a special occasion like a birthday. Not that we were poor, but you know us Ilocanos – we need the money, not the celebration!
After high school in Asingan, Pangasinan, I went to a “cheap” school, the UP College of Agriculture. During the 1st Year, we also studied Animal Husbandry, but my major was Ag Education. Teacher. I was going to raise boys’ and girls’ hopes as they lived their lives, not raise pigs in a pen.
60 years later, today, Thursday, 06 May 2021, the swines haunt me!
I just read Dexter Tilo’s news report about swine raisers: “Crying Gov’t Neglect, Various Groups Threaten To Stage ‘Food Holiday’[1]” (05 May 2021, Inquirer.net) – and my pink reactions are in the carton images above[2] (thank you, BSGStudio):
Surprised. Sleepy. Curious. Dumbfounded. Knocked Out, Aware.
The very first sentence of Mr Tilo’s report is a warning: “Agriculture Secretary William Dar is in a bind because defiant farmers are threatening a food holiday.” My favorite American Heritage Dictionary says “in a bind” means “in a particularly difficult or awkward situation, especially one that is not easy to resolve or escape (from).” The threat of a “food holiday” actually comes from the Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines via its Chair Nicanor Briones. Mr Tilo says:
Nicanor Briones on Wednesday raged against the government, accusing it of neglecting the hog sector, even punishing it through imports, tariffs, and price caps despite the industry’s suffering from the African Swine Fever outbreak.
With him “raging” against those things, I know Mr Briones has not studied the matter very, very thoroughly and I simply imagine him turning pink in anger!
In truth, as I can see it from where I sit on my comfortable executive chair writing this essay on my external 20-inch wide-angle ViewSonic monitor attached to my Lenovo ThinkPad laptop and my intelligent A4Tech keyboard, Mr Briones does not believe in cooperative agriculture as I do, as Mr Dar does.
It looks to me like Mr Briones will cooperate with you if you cooperate with him first! Another way of putting that is this: “He offers half-cooked pork barbecue you must finish cooking!”
Mr Briones does not know, but Mr Dar is your man in a troubled hour.
Thus: When Mr Dar was Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), based in India, from 2000 to 2014, ICRISAT’s slogan was, “Science with a human face.” Everyone at that institute took it to heart, and so from kulelat (dead last), ICRISAT rose to #1 among 15 international agricultural research centers, which include(d) IRRI.
History is my witness, Mr Briones. Here’s to raising hopes in these islands – Here’s to “Agriculture with a Filipino face!”@517
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