Whispering Hope Clustering – Interventions And Assistances Provided By PH DA

I say, beginning this 2021, we should start counting the value of the interventions and assistances provided by the DA to the agriculture and fisheries sectors. This follows from what Secretary of Agriculture William Darsays:

(Firstly), it is important to convince farmers and their respective (farmer) cooperatives and associations or FCAs to collectivize and come together to optimize the interventions and assistance provided by the DA and other government agencies.

Thus, I hear the DA singing “Whispering Hope[1]” (lyrics by Bill Gaither):

Soft as the voice of an angel, breathing a lesson unheard
Hope with a gentle persuasion, whispers her comforting word.
Let us now pay 100% attention as the “DA Introduces Modern Cluster Farming[2]” (ANN, 11 November 2020. NewsLine Philippines, Newsline.ph; top image from same source):

Davao City – Vegetable farmers in Baracatan, Toril, Davao City adopt precision agriculture technology to double their yield and improve quality of their produce.

The Bridge of Blessing Farmers Agriculture Cooperative (BBFAC) partnered with (an) Israeli-based company to engage in Modern Cluster Farming Technology.  Evangeline B Bartolazo, BBFAC Chairperson says their cooperative was formed in 2017 and ventured (into) high-value vegetables such as lettuce, cauliflower, and salad tomato including eggplant, upo, and ampalaya.

Now, that Davao cooperative headed by Miss Bartolazo is thriving!

The DA is whispering hope to organized farmers, lots of hope. Mr Dar continues what he says above:

Secondly, it is easier and more cost-efficient and effective for the DA to deal with organized farmers through their FCAs than individual farmers, as we provide them appropriate training and cutting-edge technologies, including farm inputs like seeds and fertilizers, and farm equipment and machinery.

Trainings, technologies, seeds, fertilizers, sets of equipment, machinery – What else do you want from the DA!?

Listen to what the BBFAC people are saying. Don’t we hear them singing?

Whispering hope, oh, how welcome thy voice
Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice.

Clustering means grouping smaller individual operations into one big operation. “Clustering and consolidation leads to attaining economies of scale,” says DA Region 11 Regional Director Ricardo Oñate Jr. “This (enables farmers) to greatly reduce their cost of operations, attain bountiful harvests, and earn better incomes.”

Before the BBFAC came into being, Miss Evangeline says the individual vegetable farmers “could not meet the volume and quality required by the market.” And irrigation was one of their major constraints. “Our crops wilted during dry season since we could hardly cope the need to water them,” she said. After Netafim, one of the world’s pioneering irrigation companies, identified the BBFAC area as the demo site for its Modern Cluster Farming Technologies:

“We invested P2 million to replicate the technology we introduced in India such as establishment of viable water source, application of drip fertigation technology, and training on (an) effective irrigation system,” says Alex Gamutan, NetaPhils CEO.

ANN says, Miss Evangeline says, “the assistance they received enabled them to increase their yield, improve quality of produce, and lower production cost.”

The DA is not only whispering – it is clustering farmers’ hopes!@517

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[1]https://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/bill_gaither/whispering_hope.html
[2]https://newsline.ph/top-stories/2020/11/11/da-introduces-modern-cluster-farming/

Goodbye 2020? My Lamentation On Fragmentation & Individualism In Philippine Agriculture

Louise Maureen Simeon quotes Secretary of Agriculture William Dar as saying, “Fragmentation, Individualism Make Philippine Agriculture Uncompetitive[1]” (08 October 2020, MSN.com):

First, our farmers remain individualistic, unorganized and thus are not linked directly to markets. Second, our farmlands are small and fragmented.

Me! Not We. Yes, individualistic – the kind of Filipino farmers that PH journalists keep on cultivating! If Inadvertently.
(“Me We” image[2] from Reason)

“You there, as a farmer you too, U2 will succeed if you follow this farmer’s example.”

Note that “U2" is the very successful Irish musical band. U2 is Irish, became and still is wildly successful, with Bono as lead singer[3] (Wikipedia). The truth is that since 1976, when U2 was formed, no other band has succeeded like it has, including The Beatles.

Why am I talking U2 here? There is another historical development that has been actually limiting farmer success – the #1 kind of story that some journalists come out with, the one I call here the You Too, U2 Story.

Lesson: A U2 story, whether about a farmer or the Irish band, cannot be easily duplicated. So, Mr U2 Journalist, from now on don’t tell me I have not warned you about writing another U2 story!
(“Storytelling” image[4] from Rockcontent.com)

The formula of some journalists, the U2 formula of writing a farmer success story, began some 60 years ago. I was around, physically watching, when that formula was being concocted at the Department of Agricultural Communication, now DevCom, at the University of the Philippines’ College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños – it was a Peace Corps Volunteer who was teaching journalists how to write aggie success stories, the one I am now calling U2 stories. (By the way, that Peace Corps Volunteer happened to be Irish-American, what a coincidence!) It is not the copycat U2 farmer who will be successful; if the journalist writes enough U2 stories, he will win an award, a national or even an Asian award for his journalism.

You tell the farmer “U2!” That is the everlasting, if unexpressed, message written by the PH journalist when s/he writes about someone who has succeeded financially in his/her farming. The message of the U2 story is this:

If you follow this farmer’s example, you too will be quite successful!

No Sir/Madam! The farmer must find his own formula to succeed in his own farming. Financial and intellectual resources are not the same. UP Los Baños teaches good farming but not how you can become a financially successful farmer – and continue doing it, to lift yourself out of poverty!

Those journalists, (al)most of them love to feature stories of financially successful individuals (rarely families) in agriculture. I forgive them – They know not what they do! Those journalists do not realize that they are celebrating individualism among farmers. May their tribe decrease! (I mean the journalists.)

Please, no more U2 stories for farmers. The story the good journalists must write must be of successful farmers in an association, group or cooperative. No more, no less!@517

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[1]https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/national/fragmentation-individualism-make-philippine-agriculture-uncompetitive/ar-BB19PyiW

[2]https://reason.com/2017/08/04/individualism-increasing-across-the-worl/

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2

[4]https://en.rockcontent.com/blog/thought-leadership-long-form-storytelling-content-marketing-success-2/

Jose Rizal As The Happy Martyr! And As Agriculturist, Businessman & Educator

 

The above image of PH National Hero Jose Rizal as  “The Happy Martyr” – my title – is from an original photograph[1] from Shutterstock.com that I painterized.

You doubt Jose Protacio Rizal y Mercado was happy to offer his life – not simply his book – to his beloved Philippines? I learned that 13 years ago translating his valedictory “Adios, Patria Adorada” – here is the very first stanza[2] (30 December 2017, “Jose Rizal, UP Oblation & 3 Lessons For The Nationalist Communicator,” Creative Thinkering):

Adios, Beloved Country
(Translation by Frank A Hilario, 2007)

Adios, beloved country, EarthLove of the Sun,
Pearl of the Sea Orient, Eden in ruins bad!
I go give gladly my life shrunk and forsaken;
And were it more brilliant, more fresh, more floral then,
Would for you give I still, still I give for your good.

Now you know your National Hero Jose Rizal better!

The original was untitled; note that my title comes from the first line of the poem, which is the rule in a poem or sonnet without a title given by the author – other Rizal translators gave the uninspiring, despairing title “My Last Farewell.”

Look at the image again: My choice of him extending a book – he is offering his worldwide knowledge of Agriculture, Business, Education.

Michael “Xiao” Chua says in his essay “Rizal ‘Imagineering’ The Nation In Dapitan[3]” (14 July 2018, Manila Times):

… Rizal’s concept of the Nation as manifested in his La Liga Filipina: A united archipelago in a “catipunang malago” [luxuriant society] where change comes from the grassroots in the shared intentions of each individual and where people show “damayan” [reciprocal help] – educating each other, learning together and encouraging agriculture and commerce together.

I am a wide reader but I did not know of what Mr Chua is saying above! But I’m happy because I find there the requirements my country needs today to catapult the Philippines into the First World.

Yes Sir! Yes Ma’am! What the Philippines needs right now are 3 things that Rizal went into in Dapitan:

(1) Multi-Crop Agriculture –
Anonymous in Weebly says[4]:

As agriculturist, Rizal devoted time planting important crops and fruit-bearing trees in his 16-hectare land (later, reaching as large as 70 hectares). He planted cacao, coffee, sugarcane, and coconuts, among many others.

(2) Agri Business –
With Ramon Carreon as partner, Rizal did business in the fishing, hemp and copra industries. They were more successful in hemp, shipping the product to a foreign firm in Manila.

(3) Universal Education–
Following La Liga Filipina precepts, we must unite in a peaceful way so that together we can work for the good of the entire archipelago. Our education must be of Unity in Diversity.

Not to forget that he was teaching boys, a total of 21 until the end of his exile in July 1896[5] (Anonymous). No tuition; instead, the boys paid with their labors – and learned besides – working in the garden, fields and construction projects of their teacher.

Our National Hero is teaching us still!@517

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[1]https://www.shutterstock.com/search/jose+rizal+monument
[2]http://creativethinkering.blogspot.com/2017/12/jose-rizal-up-oblation-3-lessons-for.html
[3]https://www.manilatimes.net/2018/07/14/opinion/analysis/rizal-imagineering-the-nation-in-dapitan/419187/
[4]https://bshmjoserizal.weebly.com/our-hero-jose-rizal/chapter-eight-jose-p-rizals-exile-in-dapitan-1892-1896
[5]https://bshmjoserizal.weebly.com/our-hero-jose-rizal/chapter-eight-jose-p-rizals-exile-in-dapitan-1892-1896

PH Hybrid Rice Companies Need The DA To Work Their Magic!

How can hybrid rice liberate farmers from poverty?

Earlier today, Monday, 28 December 2020, I blogged the essay “BigHAni – With Hybrid Vigor, Hybrid Rice Can Light Up The Whole Philippines[1]!” (Brave New World PH). The Christmas tree glowing in red & yellow (see image above, bottom left) was my metaphor for poverty emancipation of farming families – that emblazoned tree just happened to be shaped like my beloved Philippine archipelago seen from above. My BigHAni is acronym for Big Harvests Always Advancing to Appropriate Nets Indisputable. It’s hybrid rice.

“How can hybrid rice liberate farmers from poverty?” As both a journalist and an agriculturist, that is my question today even as I look at the above main image[2], which is the logo of the “International Day for the Eradication of Poverty” celebrated this year on 17 October with the leadership of the United Nations (UN.org). The 2020 theme is “Acting Together To Achieve Social And Environmental Justice For All.” The global campaign has the hashtag “#EndPoverty.”

In my hometown Asingan in Pangasinan, in March 2019, during the 8^thNational Rice Technology Forum, I myself saw the many hybrid rice varieties growing in the boundary with Urdaneta City in a techno-demo field of almost 38 hectares participated in by 85 farmer cooperators. So, we saw with our own eyes which hybrid variety/ies grew best in our fields.

Much higher productivity is the promise of hybrid rice over and above that of inbred rice and, all things being equal, therefore higher net income. According to a DA press release:

Based on the 2017 PhilRice’s policy brief, planting hybrid rice is one way to improve farmers’ competitiveness. This could increase yield and reduce production cost per kilogram of palay.

So, does that mean that hybrid rice can liberate a rice farmer from poverty but not inbred rice? Not so. Not so fast!

To liberate that farmer from poverty, you must enable him to continually grow rice with affordable financial help and help him sell his produce very profitably – and continue to do so season after season.

The liberation of the farmer from poverty does not necessarily follow from increased yield of either inbred rice or hybrid rice! It is not automatic. Not even reduced production cost per kilogram.

One little act that will prove significant in the overall attempt to liberate the farmers from poverty is to insulate them from 2 bad influencers: (1) usurers and (2) middlemen.

In real life, the usurer is quite often the middleman himself. With continuous increases in crop yields along with continuous usurious loans, it is not the farmer who becomes continuously wealthy but the ones who continue to be usurers and middlemen!

To insulate them from both usurers and middlemen simultaneously, farmers must become members of a multi-purpose cooperative. The coop can then provide them affordable loans, and can arrange for purchase of produce even before harvest time.

I believe only multi-purpose coops can produce farmers who are forever liberated from poverty. And they need help from the DA!@517

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[1]https://bravenewworldph.blogspot.com/2020/12/bighani-with-hybrid-vigor-hybrid-rice.html

[2]https://www.un.org/en/observances/day-for-eradicating-poverty

BigHAni – With Hybrid Vigor, Hybrid Rice Can Light Up The Whole Philippines!

Bighani – This Tagalog word means Charm. Synonyms:Seduction, Attraction, Beauty. My derivation, BigHAni, is acronym: Big Harvests Always Advancing to Appropriate Nets Indisputable. Meaning: High harvests, highly assured incomes.

BigHAni: Again, calling the attention of Secretary of Agriculture William Dar as I truly am thinking of a rice self-sufficient Philippines within 2021. On Christmas Eve, I proposed, “With 2020 Out & Agriculture Secretary William Dar In, We Can Go After Self-Sufficiency In Rice In 2021[1]! “ (24 December 2020, Brave New World PH).

Before BigHAni, I did notknow that we Filipinos have a “public” hybrid rice variety – the Mestiso – in contradistinction to the many “private” or commercial hybrid rices. Mestiso was bred by the very public PhilRice?

Actually, BigHAni is my personal proposal for a national program to attract more farmers to plant more hybrid rice varieties, for big harvests, for big gains.

As a national program, BigHAni will distribute hybrid rice seeds to as many as 100,000 farmers all over the Philippines – free. The recipient farmers will be selected based on previous actual personal experience and/or current knowledge on better rice farming.

In any case, BigHAni technicians will supervise the planting, cultivation, care, management of the hybrid rice crop to ensure that proper protocols are observed, from planting to marketing.

Including marketing, yes. In fact, right at the beginning of the planting, contracts signed by would-be buyers will be required, to guarantee fair and reasonable rice prices, so that the farmers will not fall victims to middlemen who only think of their own good!

BigHAni – From counting seeds to counting sacks of palay to counting cash after marketing and paying off loans, hopefully this is the beginning of a bright future for rice farmers, finally emancipating themselves from the shackles of poverty that have immobilized them since the first rice was planted and the first market opened.

If the DA funds it, if the private hybrid rice companies join BigHAni, this program will hit 5 birds with 1 stone:

(1)   Hybrid rice seeds made accessible.
Farmers can choose among 9 commercial hybrid rice varieties available: Advanta, Bayer, Bioseed, East West, Long Ping, Metahelix, Pioneer, SL Agritech and Syngenta. Either the DA will loan out to the farmers or the hybrid companies do it themselves for their rices, on easy terms.

(2)   Production protocols followed.
BigHAni is supervised production of rice, with technicians assigned to assist farmers in carrying out the soil cultivation, seedling care and all the other crop management practices necessary for highly successful hybrid rice production.

(3)   Market captured.
Right at the start, contracts will be signed by institutional or corporate consumers for the coming harvest. No middlemen will be involved or necessary.

(4)   Net profit guaranteed.
With protocols carried out properly, the net gain is assured.

(5)   DA target of rice sufficiency attained.
Within 2 croppings, the rice supply of the country should be enough to call off any importation.

Filipino farmers, this is yours. BigHAni: Bigas Na Hayop Ang Net Income para sa Indibidwal na Magsasaka. Sana!@517

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[1]https://bravenewworldph.blogspot.com/2020/12/with-2020-out-agriculture-secretary.html?q=self-sufficiency

Happy & Deservedly Prosperous Farmers Philippines – Can Hybrid Rice Cultivate Them?

 

Hybrid rices are known to be high yielders, producing grains much, much more than inbred rices. If the growing of hybrid rice is sustainable, let’s do it! Well, is it? Let’s see!

First, here are 9 hybrid rice companies in the Philippines in my list so far:

a)  Advanta Limited

b)  Bayer CropScience

c)  Bioseed Research Philippines

d)  East West Seeds

e)  Long Ping Hi-Tech

f)   Metahelix Life Sciences

g)  Pioneer Hi-Bred Philippines

h)  SL Agritech

i)   Syngenta Philippines.

Among those, my question is: “Whose hybrid rice is sustainable in the growing?”
(“Golden Rice” image[1] from Businessmirror.com.ph)

My “sustainable growing” is original. I refer to these 4 characteristics:

1)    Technically feasible –
The hybrid rice variety grows exactly as specified by the company that has bred it. The yield is high as it produces many tillers and the tillers are very productive of panicles. This is crucial, because it is the tillers that produce the panicles – and therefore the grains. The high yield is also predicated on the adequate distance of planting between hills. (I know that it is only the first generation, F1, that delivers the yield as promised by the company; the yield of the F2 is lower.)

2)    Environmentally sound –
The growing of the rice variety does not imperil or endanger the environment in terms of perpetuity or sustainability. At the very least, its cultivation should not result in soil degradation. The natural fertility of the soil should be replenished every growing season.

3)    Socially acceptable –
Nobody has any objection to the variety from seed to seed. The grains are acceptable for cooking and for eating.

4)    Economically viable –
The total cost of production is recovered when the grains are sold, with neat profit showing. This happens every growing season.

The 4^thcharacteristic I would like to elaborate further. I’m looking for a hybrid whose seasonal growing continues to give good yield; the higher the yield, the better. The system of growing is crucial too. It is necessary that in growing that hybrid rice, the farmer is able to save on costs – unlike when he is planting inbred rice, as has been the case since time immemorial! Technology must give way to Economics. Fertilizers, pesticides, farm mechanization all considered. Cost-saving is to ensure that the farmer profits much from his farming. As much as possible, over several growing seasons, the monetary rewards from planting hybrid for the farmer should enable him to slowly but surely set free his family from the shackles of poverty – and stay free!

Mr or Miss Hybrid Rice Company, here is something else you have to do – again, this is my original idea:

When you sell your hybrid rice, teach the farmer how to save on costs, from planting to drying.

Sell your hybrid seeds on credit, requiring a prior contract of the farmer with a consumer, always a contract consumer to buy.

Thus, Mr or Miss, will your package of growing your hybrid rice surely result in Filipino farmers getting rich, richer, richest. If not? Rice meeting you!@517

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[1]https://businessmirror.com.ph/2018/03/05/government-needs-to-increase-its-palay-support-price-but-by-how-much/

Here Comes SL Agritech! Advanced In Hybrid Rice, But A Laggard In The Digital World

Now I know why SL-8H, the favorite hybrid rice of mother SL Agritech Corp, is not selling much – because the mother actually stopped openly selling the offspring 7 years ago! Maybe the mother simply forgot about her child?

It’s Christmas Day as I write this; isn’t this child a gift to the world?

Above image: In the Philippines, SL Agritech Corp wasselling the virtues of Super Hybrid Rice on the 11^th of April – and then it stopped after that single news item titled “Gov’t Welcomes Super Hybrid Rice[1].” Year missing. You know what? I googled and found that that was 7 years ago yet! 2013. What happened?

Wake up, SL Agritech! Already in 2013, you had good products: SL-12H, SL-8H, and SL-18H. Why did you discontinue your website SL Agritech Corporation at
http://sl-agritech.com/
or simply abandon it?

Me, I believe in inbred rice and hybrid rice. I guess SL Agritech abandoned its digital campaign for hybrid rice because nobody was buying online. I think that is because it did not understand the farmers’ problems with hybrid rice.

It is true, as claimed, that hybrid rice gives higher yields than other rices, especially the varieties planted by farmers. So, why then do farmers not plant hybrid rice?

The usual explanation is that hybrid rice seeds are expensive. Which is correct – but that is beside the point!

The reality with our rice farmers is that they are not entrepreneurial. So? So, if SL Agritech or any other hybrid rice company wants to guarantee strong sales of their hybrid rices, they have to help the farmers in terms of financing, such as:

(a) Consult first with the farmer and make sure he understands the requirements of hybrid rice, such as amount of seeds to sow for transplanting, age of transplants, number of seedlings per hill, distance of planting, and fertilizer(s) to apply and how much.

(b) Loan out the total amount and collect payment only after marketing.

Assistances (a) and (b) guarantee efficient production and a little peace of mind of borrower farmers. However, we have yet to consider the biggest problem of farmers.  

In the 2004 study “Socioeconomic Evaluation of Hybrid Rice Production in the Philippines[2]” in 5 major rice-producing provinces – Davao Del Norte, Davao Del Sur, Iloilo, Isabela, and Nueva Ecija, the group of PhilRice researcher Flordeliza H Bordey found that the net profits from inbred and hybrid rice farming “did not differ significantly,” meaning that the higher risk with hybrid rice was a deterrent to its adoption.

I can explain that. The net profits are comparable even with the higher yield of hybrid rice because those farmers sell to middlemen who dictate the prices. The farmers cannot demand higher prices because the middlemen are their sources of funds for farming. You cannot bite the hand that feeds you!

If we want to help the poor farmers, we have to help them (a) decrease costs of production, and (b) increase consumers who pay guaranteed premium prices – contract consumers.@517

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[1]http://sl-agritech.com/myslagri/home/govt-welcomes-super-hybrid-rice

[2]http://agronomyaustraliaproceedings.org/images/sampledata/2004/poster/4/4/723_bordey.pdf