Pinoy Media 8 – Let Us Help Our Farmers Gain A Wider View Of Their Poverty Situation! As Secretary Of Agriculture 2019=2022, William Dar Had That Perspective, But BBM Unceremoniously Replaced Him With Himself!

PH journalists – Here is a Facebook recorded situation where a farmer expresses his narrow view of his situation – as much/less as the leaders of PH Agriculture has been viewing the national agricultural situation since 2022 when Pres Ferdinand “BBM” Marcos Jr unceremoniously replaced William Dar as Secretary of Agriculture and BBM pronounced his desire to reduce the price of rice.

Here is the Facebook sharing dated 30 Sept 2024 of Arnel Eusebio Bandian from a message by Fred Macapas dated 16 Sept 2020:

“If you are a farmer, pls help in sharing our sentiments. We need higher price(s) of palay and corn (so that we can recover our) farm inputs.”

Those 2 farmers are looking at the price of the product but not at the cost of production. They are assuming that they cannot change the cost of their growing rice and corn! A narrow view, sorry to say. Well, we have not been teaching our farmers some basic economics, at least to widen their view of economics.

The wider view is that they can change their farming in such a way that the cost of producing rice or corn is much, much lower than using chemical fertilizer – by using organic fertilizer. Basic economics: Lower total costs, higher total returns. Those farmers don’t know basic economics. And we should not be surprised – our agriculture leaders themselves don’t know!

In fact, the Pinoy farmer has a choice of 13 methods of “Organic Farming,” an alternative view of the methods under the concept of “Regenerative Agriculture” (RA): (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.

Regenerative Agriculture (RA) = Organic Agriculture (OA). Do our agriculture leaders know about RA? Probably not. If they do know, I don’t know why they are not talking about it, not prescribing it! OA is OK!

Whether your crop is rice (palay) or corn or tomato or some other crop, RA is godsent to farmers of all kinds – each of the 13 organic methods is cheaper than chemical farming. Lower costs, higher returns.

We need to educate the farmers on the economics of their farming, and we in media can help tremendously! Let us not be resistant to change ourselves!

And let us help our digital image workers correct their English; above, the lower image repeats the spelling mistake “resistence” that should read “resistance.” There should not be any resistance to change for the better!

I insist – PH media can most desirably help in improving the thinking of leaders of agriculture by pointing out the truth that those leaders need to widen their view. And BBM can very much improve the leadership at the DA by appointing Mr Dar as the next Secretary of Agriculture – now, today!@517