In next May or June, with a new President of my country,
current Secretary of Agriculture William
Dar may be replaced (I hope not) – but this current overall farming-related
problem will not be replaced: Chemical Agriculture (CA) wreaking havoc
on the environment by generating greenhouse gases (GHGs).
How large is the GHGs contribution of CA? ANN says the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says (Author Not Named, undated, “Greenhouse Gas Reduction,” iaea.org):
Agriculture is both a
victim of and a contributor to climate change. On the one hand, agricultural
activities contribute approximately 30 per cent of total greenhouse gas
emissions, mainly due to the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and animal
wastes.
The IAEA says 30% is what CA contributes to the total GHGs
of the world – If we worry only about so much destruction brought about by
modern typhoons and not about what magnifies their furies, we are deceiving ourselves.
To
fight climate change, as much as we can, we must do something about our CA practices!
On Facebook, Ramon
Yedra, Director of Agribusiness
and Marketing Assistance Service (AMAS) of the Department Of Agriculture
(DA), shares “For Young Filipinos, #Futureofwork Is Farming,” the article by Kay Calpo Lugtu (21 April 2022, Manila Times, manilatimes.net).
But I say, “For Young Filipinos, #Futureofwork is Regenerative Agriculture
(RAg)! And organic agriculture is RAg.”
I say the AMAS has to exuberantly encourage
the youth to go into agriculture because it is a dismal career.
Why? Because state colleges & universities (SCUs) have not
been teaching the youth how to make Agriculture lucrative! And so, just as our
favorite farm/folk song goes on and on, “Planting rice is never fun!”
To make agriculture attractive to Filipinos, let us make it
not only well-paying but also patriotic – by educating citizens not only about
costs & returns, but also about how agriculture produces GHGs that directly
cause climate change.
Why
not the Agricultural Credit & Policy Council (ACPC) providing very easy
loans to attract farmers to practice RAg? The ACPC will then be the Godmother
of Primate Change!
In the last 113 years, since the founding of UP Los Baños in
1909, our SCUs have taught farmers to be good farmers but not good
businessmen! So farming remains essentially a win-or-lose job. And they never teach
how CA generates GHGs, so we continue practicing CA.
The problem is not with the youth – the problem is that agriculture
is not an attractively high-paying job! And that is where RAg comes in.
(“Young Filipinos” image from Rappler,
Rappler.com)
Just
a simple arithmetic – RAg reduces fertilizer costs to minimum while it reduces
GHGs to maximum; therefore, returns from RAg is maximum even as the generation
of GHGs is at minimum.
RAg
should be Agriculture’s RAGE!@517
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