Pinoy Media 4 – PH Media People: We Need To And We Can Save 3 Million Filipino Farmers From Poverty, Our Welcome Tool Is? “Regenerative Journalism”!

Continuing, A Beautiful Hope to save some 3 million Filipino farmers from their poverty is via Regenerative Journalism (RJ). That is why I have so far come out with 3 new “Pinoy Media” articles in this old blog of mine; this is the 4^th  RJ article. No, we cannot hope for the PH Department of Agriculture (DA) to rescue those farmers from poverty because, since 2022, when Pres Ferdinand “BBM” Marcos Jr appointed himself Secretary of Agriculture, unceremoniously easing out William Dar, the government’s priority is “low price of rice” for consumers and not considering “low costs with high returns” for farmers! BBM blotted out the “New Thinking for Agriculture” of Mr Dar.

The image above is from Victor Mine (vectormine.com), depicting “Regenerative agriculture and sustainable crops farming.” Sorry, the original whole image is not quite clear; none of the component images is clear – ah, that’s exactly how things stand up in the world of Regenerative Agriculture (RA) – “status malabo pa!” Status yet unclear!

If I remember right, I started writing earnestly about RA on 22 April 2019 (see my article “To Solve Climate Change, Look Beneath Your Feet – Jean-Paul Courtens” (Ctrl-Click this to get there: blogspot.com), but I have yet to read about RA from the DA or aggie institutions in the country, alphabetically now: IRRI, PhilRice, UP Los Baños (my alma mater). That tells me not a single agricultural institution in PH is interested in Very Low Costs-Very High Returns (VLC-VHR) agriculture, which describes RA. In that case, those institutions are all Rip Van Winkles sleeping 100 years on the job since UP Los Baños was founded in 1918. Wake up, Rip Van Winkles!

Nonetheless, I am sure Mr Mine’s list (suggested in the image above) is very different from my own, “Frank’s List” of practices of RA, which is this:

1, Cover Cropping
2, Crop Rotation
3, Farm Crops + Tree Crops (Agroforestry)
4, Green Manuring
5, Intercropping
6, Multiple Cropping
7, No-Till Farming
8, Organic Fertilization
9, Ratooning
10, Rotational Grazing
11, “Three Sisters” Planting
12, Trap Cropping
13, Trash Mulching.

Serendipitously, it so happens that I am watching on my double screen a slideshow of my own photographs of the day UP Los Baños celebrated its 100^th anniversary: 2018. A happy occasion. Also unhappy, as I see no signs, placards, or banners about caring for the farmers and improving their lives via modern agriculture.

By the way, mine is the above listing of 13 practices of Regenerative Agriculture; American gentleman farmer Robert Rodale originated the concept of “Regenerative Agriculture,” coming out with it sometime in 1989 or thereabouts (Rodale Institute, “The Original Principles of Regenerative Agriculture,” 14 June 2018, Rodale Institute, rodaleinstitute.org).

Pinoy Media people! We have a duty to the millions of poor Filipino farmers! We can do it – we don’t have to be experts in science, just practicing Regenerative Journalism – we simply ask the scientists to explain to the farmers the science of Regenerative Agriculture!@517