SRO Is Legendary Winner Over Rice. Next Challenge – Rice-Based Farming Systems!

PhilRice is SRO, and SRO is PhilRice – The Legacy Award is well-deserved and more.

Santiago Rigonan Obien, SRO, made history with the Philippine Rice Research Institute, PhilRice. The award was given on 27 November 2020 as part of the “2019 Rice Achievers Awards” ceremonies held at the headquarters of the Bureau of Soils & Water Management in Diliman, Quezon City.

Historically, Executive Order 1061 signed by President Ferdinand E Marcos on 05 November 1985 created the Philippine Rice Research Institute, PhilRice[1]; President Corazon Aquino affirmed the creation on 07 November 1985; and in June 1987, Santiago R Obien was appointed PhilRice Director (Wikipedia.org),

PhilRice was born only once, that’s for sure – but as Executive Director, SRO saw PhilRice was born with a double challenge:

(1)   Be the national agency worthy of the national staple food of Filipinos.

(2)   Be recognized world-class.

Before PhilRice, SRO had been FAO consultant not for nothing.

Now then, an Ilocano farmer and with a doctorate degree in agriculture from the University of the Philippines’ College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños, SRO went to work twice as a Builder:

1^st, Builder of Men –
As PhilRice Executive Director, SRO selected his PhilRice people and diligently encouraged them to improve themselves further by sending them to graduate school – to gain more knowledge and to gain more confidence in themselves. He was building them as middle managers of PhilRice. History tells us SRO succeeded here. Those SRO recruits fulfilled their promise and became leaders of the different units, or leader scientists, of PhilRice.

2^nd, Builder of PhilRice –
At the start, the headquarters of PhilRice at the village of Maligaya in the City of Muñoz in Nueva Ecija was the usual government building of a rice research experiment station – the building was inherited from the Bureau of Plant Industry. Not good enough for his dreams of umpire – he wanted to elevate the game of local rice research into one of international reputation. So, he campaigned for and was awarded funds by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency.

SRO as builder of individuals and PhilRice succeeded mightily – when he retired in 2000 on his birthday 25 July, PhilRice was at the top; it had become recognized as world class and was even more popular than the International Rice Research Institute, IRRI!

Above, the Legacy Award errs in saying SRO was Executive Director of PhilRice starting 1968; the correct year is 1987. I also want to correct the imbalance of focusing too much on rice:

We Filipinos cannot live on rice alone!
PhilRice’s Palayamanan – literally, rice-based riches,
we must make national!

SRO is now 85 years old; he continues to work assiduously for his country. As a Senior Consultant to Secretary of Agriculture William Dar, SRO can be the Godfather of OpAPA – Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture – and I look at it as digital, where this 80-year old can help zealously.

Mr Dar himself is the Father of OpAPA;
now, fast, digital OpAPA
must promote riches-based farming systems
providing wealth & welfare to Filipino farming families!@517

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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Rice_Research_Institute

In PH Agriculture, How Many Single Success Stories – That’s What Some People Count. How Many Group Success Stories – That’s What Counts, People!

 

“Teaching kids to count is fine, 
but teaching them what counts is best.” 
Bob Talbert, “Generation Mindful 
genmindful.com

On Facebook, I am almost always reading about agriculture and Single Success Stories, SSS – they make their writers and their subjects happy, and I can’t take that away from them. Those journalists who come up with SSS stories are teaching people to count one by one by one.

Instead of SSS, me, I prefer to count group by group, Group Success inspiring Stories, GSiS – and as I see it, this is what the PH Department of Agriculture, DA, is concentrating on, headed by Secretary of Agriculture William Dar, following his own “New Thinking for Agriculture.”

Let’s count. So far, in PH Agriculture, there are how many SSS stories already told? Say 500 since 10 years ago. Let us grant that they have inspired another 500 people, to make 1,000 SSS stories worth telling. Success means each became rich, or richer.

That’s nothing if you consider the successes of collaborative, combined efforts of groups. Pardon me, but the successes I count the most are those of farmer associations, farmer alliances, farmer cooperatives.

As with the Three Musketeers:
All For One, One For All!

And so I note with gladness that the DA has a new multi-million program as according to a press release 25 September 2020 – “DA Rolls Out P250-Million Agribusiness Grant For Farmer Coops[1]” (DA.gov.ph). When you feature SSS, you are cultivating individualism – differently, the DA under Mr Dar is cultivating collectivism, that is, clustering of efforts:

The program, “Enhanced Kadiwa Financial Grant” aims to provide cooperatives additional capital to purchase supplies and equipment and help them sell their produce directly to consumers. The grant includes vegetable crates, packing equipment, delivery truck, and revolving fund as assemblers or consolidators of fresh produce.

Never in the history of PH Agriculture has a government program been like this, distributing to groups to purchase supplies and equipment to consolidate fresh produce and deliver directly to consumers. The producers win, the consumers too!

An estimated 4,450 agri-fishery cooperatives are beneficiaries. So? So not only hundreds but thousands of people will succeed!

Another group focus is for “DA To Support Clustered Backyard Poultry, Livestock Farms[2]” (28 October 2020,  DA.gov.ph). The initial budget for this is P337 million and is part of the DA’s National Livestock Program. To qualify for the grants, would-be recipients are required to group themselves into clusters with at least 15 members, if not members already of a cooperative, association, or people’s organization. The animals distributed include goats, sheep, ducks, swine, cattle and carabaos. I learn that the project beneficiaries per module may receive the following: 100 chicks for broiler production, 40 hens for egg production, 40 ducks for balut, piglets and cattle.
(animals image[3] from Webstockreview.net)

Now then, thousands of farmers can achieve GSiS success because there is so much support from the DA!

I call that spoiling the farmers, but it’s DA-Okay!@518

 

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[1]https://www.da.gov.ph/da-rolls-out-p250-million-agribusiness-grant-for-farmer-coops/?fbclid=IwAR31LbTZuvRddEBfT84Mry_w9IDtcgBUHjWfhGPer5Y2YSM-zEF6NlwDUl0

[2]https://www.da.gov.ph/da-to-support-clustered-backyard-poultry-livestock-farms/?fbclid=IwAR3AIgwTCFFgkb7uJUYLg_Toj5i28LasNhdtMJdPwdR1AUei6u6XrEGXPoU

[3]https://webstockreview.net/explore/farmers-clipart-farmyard-animal/

For UP Los Baños To Be Really Pro-Farmer, Here’s How It Can Do Extension

The functions of the University of the Philippines’ College of Agriculture, UPCA, now UP Los Baños, have always been 3: Instruction, Research, Extension.

Pertinently, my photograph taken at UP Los Baños campus on Valentine’s Day 2019 – note the arms extended. The Oblation is saying, “With Love, Everything I have is Yours!”

Today, Friday, 27 November 2020, I google for “UPLB Development Extension” and I get the webpage https://ovcre.uplb.edu.ph, “Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, Development, Extension.” Now, that webpage says Dr Merdelyn C Lit is “Vice Chancellor for Research and Extension!” Where’s “Development?”

Under Extension, the website says, “Training Programs, Analytical & Research Services, and Human Resources.” The Training Programs total 23 – it means you have to attend a training in order for UPLB to be able to say it did Extension on you.

But Training is only half of Extension – where is the other half?

Extension has to be in the field. The farmer has questions he wants answers for, or needs choices.

Look at the Oblation image again, the extended hands – to me, that is a gesture saying, “Ask me for anything and I am ready to give you!” Extension is helping someone solve a problem or resolve an issue right where that someone is. For the farmer, the extension must be in his farm.

And how can UPLB conduct Extension without hiring field technicians or extension workers? Easy. The answer is digital. Ultimately the magic of the cellphone!

PH Department of Agriculture, DA, is doing everything in the matter of pushing Agriculture to the appropriate level of socially shared productivity and profitability – but only half of Extension. So why not DA and UPLB in a common full extension program?

My proposal: Extension by Cellphone Agriculture!

First, create a Knowledge Bank on Agriculture: data & information on crops and livestock, technologies, systems etc detailed for considerations, uploaded so that they can be downloaded data by data if necessary, or as packages of information as well as options for decision by the user.

The system proposed in 2003 by now-PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar when he was Director General of ICRISAT, called Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture, OpAPA, is the knowledge bank I’m thinking of. For OpAPA, that year I prepared a digital roadmap called Geography of Knowledge, Go Know, to prepare the treasures of OpAPA, ultimately withdrawable via  cellphone. (PM me for my email address if you want a free pdf copy of Go Know.) Once OpAPA is programmed, any farmer can ask any question via his cellphone and he will get instant reply! That’s Extension.

It should not be complicated; agriculture should be simplified for the farmer. Suppose he wants to know about Hybrid Rice? With Cellphone Agriculture, just typing the words “hybrid rice” (no quotes) and he will get answers for any number of subsequent questions he can ask via his beloved cellphone. How beautiful is that?

Now, with DA funding, UPLB can do 100% OpAPA to help farmers digitally. Done right, Cellphone Agriculture is Intelligent Extension!@517

“Researchers 2020“ The World Applauds – “Farmers 2020“ The Researchers Ignore!

“Science with a human face” is the best 5-word guide I have ever encountered to national, inclusive development. You know what? The above news is all science, no human face!

“Science with a human face” means “Science serving the people.” If you did not know, that rallying cry was coined about 20 years ago by ICRISAT, based in India, when now-PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar was Director General. What good is your science if it’s all paper, no people?

Clarivate “Web of Science” has all the right to proclaim to the world about its list of “Highly Cited Researchers 2020” – these are the authors of technical papers who have been cited most often in scientific journals anywhere in the world:

Papers published enrich science –
they do not enrich the farmers.
And why not?
Farmers don’t plant, cultivate, harvest, dry & sell papers!

As a creative writer in agriculture & agroforestry in the last 45 years, beginning when I became the Chief Information Officer (not the title) of the Forest Research Institute in April 1975, scientists have been growing the sciences of Agriculture and Forestry in their field labs, but scientists have been ignoring the lives of lowland farmers and hillside farmers!

Science has improved science – but the lives of the poor farmers have remained unimproved.

I know that the prolific scientist authors deserve their due as “Highly Cited Researchers 2020” and that they are “Applauded by the world” – I also know that the farmers do not deserve being ignored by highly cited researchers!

If you look at the above composite image again, you will note the littler image I snapped on: “1. Poor productivity growth in agriculture.” (image[1]” from SlideShare.net). “Poor productivity growth” here means not only relatively high costs that give high yields but also definitely low returns to millions of farmers.

At this point in time, it is not the lack of science that is the problem in agriculture – it is the lack of scientific knowledge & poor science management reaching or guiding the farmers that have prevented them from enriching their lives with the sweat of their own brows!

I am an alumnus of UP Los Baños, and I have been Editor In Chief for several publications in agriculture and forestry in the last 45 years, so I know that when it comes to technical papers published by researchers and cited.by other researchers – those papers are good for promoting researchers, not promoting farmers!

Subsequently, I look at the published scientists in agriculture as the Lazy Juans – they are industrious in bringing new or improved knowledge to publications, but not to the farmers who need it the most!

And you know what? It is the UP System itself that promotes scientists and ignores farmers. UP promotes in rank and salary those who publish more in any of those Web of Science’s list of publications, but UP does not promote those scientists who work directly with the farmers. Activists in UP will go to the streets but not the farms.

Wisen up, UP!@517

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[1]https://pt.slideshare.net/KarlLouisseObispo/the-profile-of-the-filipino-farmer/2?smtNoRedir=1

DepEd Illustration Of Farmer Family – No Class, No Basis, No Thanks!

Class, for today, we have 2 lessons. 
1^st Lesson – Check your facts. 
2^nd Lesson – Check your figures.

If to you the right panel in the main image above is a good portrayal of a Filipino farming family, this teacher who happens to be the son of a farmer, is telling you that you have notbeen taught correctly!

I declare: Not even the poorest Filipino family head & members dress in holey clothes!

That illustration is an offence both to the farmers on one hand and the government on the other. And there is the hidden, if unintended, message: If you want to be poor, be a farmer!

Above, with her half-body inset, GMA creative writer Suzette Doctolero defends the DepEd illustration in a Grade 3 virtual learning module (Jan Milo Severo, 19 November 2020, “No Discrimination? 'Encantadia' Creator Agrees With Farmer's Look In DepEd Module[1],” PhilStar.com). “Encantadia” is a TV fantasy series on enchanted people in 4 kingdoms shown over the years in Channel 7 (GMA), which proves that Miss Suzette has an independent mind.

Now, let us look at what Miss Suzette with her liberated mind has written in defending that poor DepEd farmer illustration! This is another liberated mind speaking. This is what she wrote on Twitter:

Ah e ano ba akala sa damit ng mga magsasaka at pamilya? Branded? Tama ang drawing. Miserable ang buhay ng mga magsasaka natin. Nagkakabagong damit lang ang magsasaka ‘pag may libreng tshirt sa hardware (tuwing pasko) o give away sa election.

(So what do you think of the clothes of farmers and families – Branded? The drawing is correct. The lives of our farmers are miserable. Farmers can enjoy new clothes only if there is free T-shirt from the hardware (come Christmas), or give-away during elections.)

Miss Suzette must believe what she is saying – look at her wide smile!

But I thank you! Miss Suzette for those 41 Twitter words of yours I quoted above. I have been educated. Now I know that even media people are uneducated about the Philippines!

In this pandemic lockdown since March 2020, are we in what George Orwell describes in his prescient novel 1984, the perfect imperfect situation?

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

The illustration appears in an English module for Grade 3 pupils about “proper and common nouns” that depict a farming family as impoverished. I say the illustration itself is improper! As a media person, an agriculturist, and a certified Civil Service Professional teacher, I cannot allow DepEd to continue to depict its ignorance on farmers’ lives. There are many poor farmers, yes, but they are not as poor as the drawing above is unhappily showing everyone. This demeaning depiction of the family of a Filipino farmer must be discontinued to exist on the pages of the modules of DepEd. They are teaching the wrong things about Philippine agriculture to Filipino children!

Why? Because that the typical Filipino farmer is a pauper is one of the latest fantasies of the creator of Encantadia!@

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[1]https://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2020/11/19/2058024/no-discrimination-encantadia-creator-agrees-farmers-look-deped-module

Plant Breeders, Also Journalists Are Important In Developing PH Agriculture – But They Must Practice “Science With A Human Phase”

Remember: Science is for People, not Plant Breeders, not Journalists.

The article “SEARCA Tells Filipino Plant Breeders To Use Genomics In Crop Dev’t” in the Manila Bulletin of 23 November 2020 by Madelaine B Miraflor‌, has lessons for the Editor and the Journalist.

I happen to be an agriculturist, writer & editor. So I know that there, the Journalist misses the point of the news coming from the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study & Research in Agriculture, SEARCA. The angle of the Journalist is off tangent. Yes, SEARCA said, via Director Glenn B Gregorio, “Plant breeders should use technology that makes use of gene transformation to fast-track development of crops like the Golden Rice, which has superior traits.” But that is not the major message of Mr Gregorio.

We can find that main point from what the SEARCA Director says, which the Journalist herself quotes:

I am a plant breeder, and I’m very familiar with (molecular) marker-assisted selection. As I get older, I realize the importance of sales, of commercialization. We should have market-aided selection so that our selection for traits should be based on the market, not only markers (molecular markers). There should always be a business component in everything we do.

When scientists produce a genetically modified organism, GMO, like Golden Rice that which they have bred to produce more Vitamin A than the usual rice grain, those scientists do not produce for their own satisfaction but for the rice eaters.

The market for science is the people, not the scientists!
(“Science for the people[1]” image from Astig.ph)

Very clearly, Mr Gregorio is saying, “I realize the importance of sales, of commercialization.” You have a beautiful produce? You still have to sell it to the public. “Science with a human face” was how Secretary of Agriculture William Dar put it when he was Director General of ICRISAT 2000-2014. If the people do not like your product, they will not bite!

Plant breeding is for people, not plant breeders. “We should have market-aided selection so that our selection for traits should be based on the market, not only markers (molecular markers).” The human phase is: Breed the crop according to what the target consumers want, or need.

Yes, the Journalist is right in claiming that Mr Gregorio said to use genomics in crop development, so that you can breed faster a desired crop and reduce breeding costs by 32% compared to the conventional methods. But the customer must like your new product, or there is no sale!

I remember now my idol. Whom the GMO people should be emulating in creating new products is the genius Steve Jobs of Apple – he instinctively knew what people wanted even if they could not articulate it. No market research, but when the iPod appeared, everyone wanted it! And so with the iPhone, and the iPad (tablet computer)…

Everyone needs Steve Jobs’ genius to produce and sell new products. Even among plant breeders, may his tribe increase!@517

 

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[1]https://astig.ph/bulacan-state-university-science-technology-week-2019-event/

Entrepreneurship In Agriculture School For The Youth, EASY! How To Become Rich As A Farmer

A college degree does not teach you how to become a rich farmer – you have to learn actual entrepreneurship in the field itself!

Above, “Is This The End Of College As We Know It?” is a Facebook sharing by Ivanka Trump, adult & digitally aware daughter of US President Donald Trump. The image comes from the article of that title[1] by Douglas Belkin in The Wall Street Journal published 12 November 2020. I cannot access the WSJ article, but suffice it for me to say that the American reality is the same Philippine reality – we are looking at being digital already.

Whatever the state of college education – which to this teacher is malabo, blurred, unclear – that WSJ story simply inspires me to think of PH youth going into agriculture but not having to earn a college degree, those young ones between 15 and 24 years of age, by UN definition. And this is what I’m thinking as the educational setup:

Entrepreneurship in Agriculture School for the Youth. EASY!

The school EASY will be hosted by willing and able state colleges & universities, SCUs, with funding from the Department of Agriculture. Calling the attention of Secretary of Agriculture William Dar!

The schooling/non-schooling is to follow the Danish Folk High School formula, where the Guru assigned to the student helps him/her determine the Subject Matters – and who are the mentors that could help the student understand more toward becoming an entrepreneur in agriculture.

I’m thinking of a 2-year entrepreneurial learning-work program for the youth:

Year 1 is Field Practice.
First, Digital Search:
Digital searches for agriculture options, then actually applied in the field: Crops, Combinations, Cultivations, Consequences. The Crops, Combinations & Cultivations are to be the products of digital research, defended in class by the proponent youth. Much like a thesis, the results of the defense will be applied in the field. The Consequences are to be reported and defended again in class.

Next, Actual Farming:
The youth now undertakes actual farming. One will keep records of crop, combinations, inputs, technologies, and machines – costs & returns. The Guru will try to help one succeed in earning much from so much labor.

Year 2 is Entrepreneurship Practice.
The Guru discusses what the youth has achieved in Year 1 in terms of what I call The Four Sustainability Successes:

1.  Technical Success – Which of the technologies, techniques and systems that he used in Year 1 actually worked as expected?

2.  Economic Success – How much did the youth entrepreneur earn as net in each of the farm produce? Which inputs put the earnings down and which inputs put the earnings up?

3.  Environmental Success – Did the Field Practice in fact conserve natural resources?

4.  Social Success – Is the way of farming as practiced in the field acceptable to the village where the farm is located?

That is to say, EASY entrepreneurship is a Four Successes Story!

All in all: An entrepreneur is not born – s/he is made. And it is those 4 Successes that make one!@

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[1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-this-the-end-of-college-as-we-know-it-11605196909