CLSU Agriculture Summit – How Do We Make Climates Friendlier And All Farmers Richer?

We have had unfriendly El Niño and La Niña climates – and always poor farmers, only a few hardly rich, even if all farmers worked hard, very hard. Why do farmers keep throwing good money after bad?! 
(“farmer & money” image from pexels.com)

Soon, coming up this Monday, 17 June 2024, sponsored singlehandedly by the Central Luzon State University (CLSU) at its campus in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, is the “CLSU Sustainability Summit On Agriculture.”

I have written 3 separate articles about that Summit this week – check out my blog Communication For Development Of Vibrant Villages (ComDev2, blogspot.com), because I want to make sure that during the Summit, those in the know will come up with how to help farmers cultivate their farms much more intelligently than before!

How? Via the construction of a knowledge bank. I keep repeating this because this is extremely important: Some 24 years ago, then-Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) based in India, William Dar submitted a proposal for a digital knowledge bank called Open Academy for Philippine Agriulture (OpAPA). As a PhilRice consultant, I wrote a digital book titled The Geography Of Knowledge on how OpAPA could respond even to those who know not a single technical word in agriculture.

What happened? Nothing! For one reason or another, OpAPA died “a natural death” – today, I want to revive the concept because a knowledge bank for everyone is more urgent than ever, given the everyday reality of Climate Change – “El Niño” and “La Niña” bringing in harsh weathers and cruel soils that are either too wet or too dry.

What can the Sustainability Summit do towards Primate Change to fight Climate Change? Create a group of concerned scientists to write out a proposal for an OpAPA-like proposal and look for funding from any or all of the following: ADB, Development Bank of the Philippines, LandBank, USAID and/or some other fund sources.

Primates! We must change Climate Change, or it will change all of us – for the worst.

What can we do? Let’s stop Chemical Agriculture (CA) and replace it 100% with Regenerative Agriculture (RA). Chemical farming generates greenhouse gases (GHGs), and it is the GHGs that generate Climate Change. Regenerative farming produces zero GHGs and instead grows healthy soils, healthy harvests, healthy foods, and healthy farmers – with healthy bank accounts.

I now call the knowledge bank I am proposing “CLSU-A²” meaning Collective Learning in Science Useful for A+ Agriculture. CLSU-A² will be understandable by beginning & experienced farmers who know some English, or as helped by their children in school, and/or assisted by their Municipal Agricultural Officers (MAOs). Nobody will have an excuse for not visiting this digital library with either a cellphone, notebook, laptop, or desktop computer.

CLSU-A² will be science at the fingertips of seekers of knowledge to defeat Climate Change and make Primate Change victorious over farmer poverty at least.

CLSU Summit in Agriculture – MAOs, are you paying good attention to the bad climate and poor farmers? Asking as a friend!@517