How To Resolve A National Problem – ¬PH Being World’s #1 Rice Importer, How To Rise Above Mediocrity: Primate-Friendly Inbred Rice Or Hybrid Rice? Both! & Both Via Climate-Friendly Non-Chemical Agriculture!

How To Resolve A National Problem – ­PH Being World’s #1 Rice Importer, How To Rise Above Mediocrity: Primate-Friendly Inbred Rice Or Hybrid Rice? Both! & Both Via Climate-Friendly Non-Chemical Agriculture!

Very Bad News – “Philippines To Remain As World’s Top Rice Importer [Until] 2025,” Jasper Emmanuel Arcalas says (13 May 2024, PhilStar, philstar.com). Very Good News, I agriculturist say: “Even today, my country the Philippines has hybrid and inbred rice varieties that can yield 2 times as much as our current farmers are getting – and earn 3 times as much as they do today! That is, if our farmers practice intelligent nature-based farming. In which case, our farmers will decrease their costs hugely and increase their returns largely, so that in 1 year PH will be self-sufficient in rice – and our poor rice farmers will become rich, richer, richest!

That dream of mine can only come true if PhilRice, IRRI and our hybrid rice companies practice-teach as one united group any of the following methods of non-chemical agriculture called “Regenerative Agriculture,” the philosophy of which we owe American farmer Robert Rodale (see “The Original Principles Of Regenerative Agriculture,” 1989, Rodale Institute, rodaleinstitute.org); here is my personal, alphabetical list –

Regenerative Agriculture (RA) –
1, Cover Cropping
2, Crop Rotation
3, Farm Crops + Tree Crops (Agroforestry)
4, Green Manuring
5, “Highly Ecological Rotavation” (HERo, FAH’s invention)
6, Intercropping
7, Multiple Cropping
8, No-Till Farming
9, Organic Fertilization
10, Ratooning
11, “Three Sisters” Planting
12, Trap Cropping
13, Trash Mulching.

You can grow hybrid rice and/or inbred rice using any of the above 13 ways of natural methods of growing crops, in fact, any crop – regenerative agriculture revives and maintains the natural fertility of soils.

Specifically about hybrid rice:

Ruth Abbey Gita-Carlos says, “PBBM Eyes Program For Hybrid Rice Production To Boost Crop Yield” (15 Feb 2023, Philippine News Agency, pna.gov.ph):

President Ferdinand R Marcos Jr has sought the implementation of a program that will promote the use of hybrid rice varieties to help increase crop production in the country, Malacañang announced on Wednesday… (This after) Marcos met Tuesday with executives of SL Agritech Corp (SLAC) and farmer representatives from Central Luzon at Malacañan Palace in Manila to address the challenges in the rice industry.

That was last year. Don’t forget: In the Philippines:

(1) The industrial challenge is: Rice is PH’s staple crop, but PH is the world’s #1 rice importer!
(2) The existential challenge is: Climate Change!

Ruth Abbey Gita-Carlos says (15 Feb 2023, “PBBM Eyes Program For Hybrid Rice Production To Boost Crop Yield,” Philippine News Agency, pna.gov.ph), During the meeting, Chief Executive Officer of SL Agritech Corp Henry Lim Bon Liong

proposed the conversion of about 1.9 million hectares of rice farming areas planted with certified seeds (CS) to [increase] the planting of hybrid seeds in four years.

CS yes; regenerative agriculture, yes! We want to avoid rice importation – at the same time, we also want to avoid Climate Change. And we can do both & simultaneously by growing rice via any of the 13 methods I listed above under Regenerative Agriculture.

Very happy rice farming, Filipinos!@517