Monday, 09 May 2022, Voting Today In Manila For The Good Of The Many Filipinos I Love Many Times Over, Even If They Don’t Know That I Do!

In the past month, I came to know exactly whom to vote for as President of my country, the Philippines. It’s the Vision that made me decide, not anything else – that I connected with the farmers. (See my essay, “Choosing A President By A Candidate’s Vision…” 08 May 2022, Towards A New Eden, Blogspot.com.)

My love affair with the millions of poor farmers on the hills and fields officially began on 16 April 1975 Manila time when I started as an Information Editor of the Forest Research Institute (FORI), now the Ecosystems Research Development Bureau(ERDB) but still based on the campus of UP Los Baños.

How happy I was in my FORI journalism for the lowland and upland people? Here’s an in/direct measure:
(“Shadows & Field” image by me, 24 Jan 2019)

Between 1975 and 1980, I became the Founder & Editor in Chief of 3 FORI publications: Canopy, monthly newsletter; Sylvatrop, quarterly technical journal in forestry; and Habitat, quarterly popular magazine.

I say now writing is my first love – and last. There are no writers in the history of the Hilarios (and Agapitos, my mother’s lineage); writing just came naturally. As a student of Rizal Junior College (HS Dept) in my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan, I was encouraged in my reading with the school’s relatively rich library, especially by Reader's Digest. And I Ilocano won over a native Tagalog speaker to become the highly unusual Tagalog Editor of our school organ!

 At UP Los Baños, I wrote for the Aggie Green & Gold, the student newsletter.

When I was hired by Director Elpidio L Rosario as an Extension Specialist for the Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute (FSSRI) of UPLB, I edited the proceedings of an FSSRI seminar, and with my own typing and retyping, I produced the book Focus On The Small Farmer – the title was mine.

Thinking about it now, I can say that the title of that book describes my writing since 1975. 47 years later, with the addition of my blogging skills, I’m still writing for small farmers!

I am the son of a farmer in our hometown in Eastern Pangasinan, with 1 or 2 ha as property. My father Dionisio reached Grade 3; my mother Sixta reached only the Cartilla.

Early on, I understood and sympathized with the unschooled and unskilled farmers. We had a bangkag, upland farm, on which we grew some corn, some tomatoes, and much more eggplants. My mother would bring the eggplants in big baskets to Divisoria (Manila), along with other merchants, on a delivery truck whose owner I never cared to know – I just know my mother made some honest money and made the family happy as well as proud.

Not rich, I must say. Farmers plant, harvest and sell – I never heard of a farmer who became rich out of his farming in our hometown Asingan.

Why not? Which is why I write and continue to write.@517