“Prioritize Agriculture To Achieve Zero Poverty Rate” – Presidentiable Bongbong Marcos. Yes Sir! And To Save Us From Climate Change, I Am Looking At Organic Agriculture
In that essay, I emphasized farms & farmers, and organic
farming. Not surprising, as I am an alumnus of UP Los Baños, BSA Ag Edu 1965 –
an agriculturist who is a teacher. More appropriately, an extensionist, having
concocted my own theory of communication
for development of villages in the 21st century (CoViD21)
last Tuesday, 23 Nov 2021.
Yes, CoViD21. I’m excited, really, that a Presidentiable has
spoken of Agriculture as #1 in his priority. Daniza
Fernandez says “Prioritize Agriculture
To Achieve Zero Poverty Rate – Marcos” (20 March 2022, Inquirer.net).
I am a farmer’s son from Asingan in Eastern Pangasinan, so I know farmer
poverty. We were not poor, but sometimes we did not have any dish except
rice – we settled on bagoong (salted
fish), sometimes with onions. And when I attended my grade school class, I brought
with me about a tablespoon of molasses powder for snack.
In the countryside, poverty is when your family can hardly
meet the necessities of life in food, clothing, and medicine. Farmer poverty is
when your father farmer has to borrow money from a usurer in order to buy
fertilizer and pesticide. Farmer poverty is when your family has to borrow money
from the usurer, again, in-between harvests of rice. Farmer poverty is when
your family has to borrow money from the usurer, again, to pay the school fees
of your child. Farmer poverty is when your family has to borrow from the
usurer, again, to pay for the medical expense when someone gets sick.
We have 5 million farmers. How many poor families are there among
our farmers? As of 17 Dec 2021, we are looking at the “Proportion Of Poor
Filipinos Registered At 23.7 Percent In The First Semester Of 2021” (Philippine Statistics Authority, psa.gov.ph):
“This translates to 26.14 million Filipinos who lived below the poverty
threshold estimate at P12,082 for a
family of 5 per month.”
That’s
P56/person/day, or P18.67/meal. You don’t know poor until you are, or have neighbors
who are.
Rappler’s story
has this title: “Climate Change Creating ‘New Poor’ In PH” (Rappler.com).
Also. But more the other way around – it is the Filipino farmers who create
climate change in the country because of their wrong practice of agriculture.
The
prevailing mode, chemical agriculture (CA), is the one that creates greenhouse
gases that help exacerbate climate change.
For
agriculture to ease up climate change, BBM should see organic agriculture (OA) being
adopted throughout the Philippines immediately. OA grows incomes and healthy
foods and pleasant climes!
Above
images: Top from Asia Media, asiamedia.lmu.edu,
bottom from Rappler , both images I
redesigned to indicate a nascent revolution – necessary! @517
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