Surprise! Jose Rizal As Your Ideal Farmer Long Ago – Centuries Before Climate Change And Regenerative Agriculture!

You probably know that PH National Hero Jose Rizal was a farmer in Dapitan before he was executed by the Spaniards, but you did not know, and neither did I realize except now, that he was a consummate farmer (as he was a consummate nationalist) – from 1892, he was already practicing the concept of what we now know as “Regenerative Agriculture” (RA) that was going to be advanced by organic farmer Robert Rodale in the 1980s yet. Rizal must have seen RA practices in his travels across the United States and in Europe. I am reminded now of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” and I quote: “Two roads diverged in the yellow woods / And I took the one less travelled by / And that has made all the difference.” At Talisay, Rizal made all the difference.

Jose Rizal – you believe in him as PH’s “National Hero.” He was also a national hero during his exile in Dapitan 1892-1896, in what we now call “Regenerative Agriculture.”

Here is Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org):

The 16-hectare (40-acre) estate in Talisay was purchased by Rizal for PhP4,000 after winning the “Reales Loterías Españolas de Filipinas” (English: Royal Spanish Lottery of the Philippines) two months after arriving in Dapitan, Zamboanga Del Norte. Rizal built houses (on) the site, started a farm, put up a school for boys, and built a hospital where he could practice medicine and treat the poor for free. For four years, he worked as a rural physician, farmer, merchant, inventor, painter, sculptor, archaeologist, linguist, teacher, architect, poet, biologist and environmentalist. His mother, Teodora Alonso, sisters and other relatives would later on come to live with him in the farm.

“In order to keep the farm under proper management, Dr Rizal designated one of his sisters, Trinidad, to look after the farm. After several years, Trinidad passed the farm's management to Fernando Eguía, one of Dr Rizal's students.” Thank you for caring and able sisters!

The Rizal family and relatives lived in that farm 800 km from Calamba, Laguna. It wasn’t the view – I surmise it was the fact that they were away from prying eyes and they were enjoying staying in the Talisay farm, with healthy food for the eyes (natural views) and food for the stomach (naturally grown fruits and vegetables).

Rizal was a much better farmer than millions of Filipino farmers today! Why? Because Rizal’s farming was natural, where modern Filipinos’ chemical farming is causing the generation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are worsening Climate Change! GHGs are invisible but their damages are visible – they assume the forms of very destructive “El Niño” and extremely damaging “La Niña.”

Not only terrible destruction, but chemical agriculture is very expensive, so I am not surprised that millions of Filipino farmers are poor!

Joseph Sebastian Javier writes (“What Rizal Did in Dapitan: Collecting Local Fauna, Establishing a Boarding School, and Healing the Sick,” undated, Esquire, esquiremag.ph):

The national hero’s activities in Dapitan prove that he was the quintessential Renaissance man.

My hero!@517