My Proposal: Unlimited-Usable Popular-Language Bank For Advancing Agriculture (UPLB for A2) – What You See Right Now Should Be A Portent Of Things To Come!

For many years now, right after the painting-filled gate of UP Los Baños at the foot of Mt Makiling, you can’t miss 2 ultra-large modern digital screens (left shown above) – and all you can say, as an alumnus, is? Wow!

(photo taken by me 08 Sept 2018)

The digital screen says, “October 10. Luncheon Salu-salo and Raffle Cultural Night.” (Salu-salo, party) This was for the celebration of Loyalty Day, the most attended yearly occasion by alumni of UPCA, now UP Los Baños (UPLB). It was the Centennial Loyalty Day. [You know what? In 1967, I wrote the heart-tugging open-letter “What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?” that singlehandedly changed the Target of Loyalty from vague American (WW1) to Filipino patriotism.]

Above, behind the modern screen you see an ancient tree, one large branch chopped off to accommodate (?) that 21^st century screen. To me, the hidden message is this:

While you don’t get rid of the olden,
you must get on with the modern!

Is my alma mater UPLB that modern in Research, Development and Extension (RD&E)? Yes. And No!

UPLB Extension is ancient, as intimated by the Carabao Park (left of image) that to this day displays carabao heads and a man with a plow. With knowledge dating back 100 years, UPLB continues to ignore the Internet as a medium for its Extension works!

UPLB has nothing remotely like the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture (OpAPA), concept proposal for OpAPA forwarded 19 years ago by then-Director General William Dar of India-based ICRISAT, sister to IRRI in the Philippines. Mr Dar is now PH Secretary of Agriculture – while his OpAPA has been lost in time!

I know. PhilRice recruited me as a consultant for OpAPA, and I wrote a digital book I called The Geography Of Science, 198 pages, detailing how the OpAPA dream could be turned into reality; that book is with me still. Today, the digital world of Philippine agriculture is sleeping and I am still dreaming!

With that ultra-modern screen for passersby, you would think UPLB is ultra-modern, and you would be ultra-disappointed!

An alumnus, I am a BSA major in Ag Edu, 2.36 Weighted Average, with a Civil Service Professional license, 80.6%. Towards the end of 1985, about 37 years ago, I began teaching myself digital writing, editing, image manipulation, layouting, up to desktop publishing. The Hilarios connected to the Internet in 1997; I began blogging in 2000.

My blogging is not primarily motivated by personal glory or profit – it is to serve Philippine Agriculture in a thousand ways more than UPLB has been doing!

Via this essay, this alumnus proposes that a digital Unlimited-Usable Popular-Language Bank For Advancing Agriculture (UPLB for A²) be generated for easy use by extensionists and farmers anywhere anytime – library-able via cellphone. Extension is what is missing in PH Agriculture today!

Hopefully with P17 Million funding from the Department of Agriculture (DA) – the DA knows that knowledge must reach the farmers anyhow anytime!@517