Brains & Beauty Agriculture

It occurs to me early this morning, 0600 hours Tuesday, 30 June 2020 in Manila, that I am not at rest yet with Marlen V Ronquillo’s Manila Times column of 28 June 2020, “In A Prostrate Sector, Vileness Does Not Rest” after I came out with my earlier essay, “Marlen V Ronquillo – I Agree With You, “In A Prostrate Sector, Vileness Does Not Rest [1] ” (29 June 2020, THiNK Journalism, Digital ). I have something much more to say about Mr Ronquillo’s claim below: The Department of Agriculture (DA) is so engrossed with propaganda and image building that it totally jettisoned its legal and moral mandate to help the small farmers. Should be written “image-building” – hyphen necessary. But that is minor. The major point is this: Yes, Mr Ronquillo, I can tell you that the DA under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie has been “so engrossed with propaganda and image-building” for Philippine agriculture! “Propaganda,” says my favorite American Heritage Dictionary , means “The sy

Mr Ronquillo, I Frank A Hilario agree with the title of your 28 June 2020 M anila Times column: “In A Prostrate Sector, Vileness Does Not Rest [1] ” – now guess where it’s coming from!? You say right away: The time of the virus is, in the ideal world, the time to end the assault on the country’s small farmers. Small farmers in the country are the country’s wretched: invisible to government, prey to repressive laws like the Rice Tariffication Law, avoided like a plague by the banking mainstream — and voiceless and cowed. Mr Ronquillo, those first 54 words from you are in their combined sense hyperbole – exaggerated and/or without proof given. It is also a logical fallacy called argumentum ad misericordiam , or appeal to pity,  not appeal to reason. I studied those in Western Thought , UP Los Baños. We must always appeal to reason. Now, “A man always has two reasons for doing anything,” says JP Morgan, “a good reason and the real reason.” Let’s see! You say: The Department of Agri

“’Briefing And Consultation On FAW’ Kicks Off In The Town With Sweetest Banana In Asia [1] ,” the news said from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Agrarian Reform of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, BARMM (Facebook post). FAW is the fall army worm that attacks corn disastrously. There were almost 50 farmers from barangays of the town of Amai Manabilang, Lanao del Sur who attended 23-24 June 2020, in Barangay Punud. The farmers were members of either the Land Owners Producers Cooperative, Punud Bumbaran Agriculture Cooperative, or Ranao Ibaning Indigenous People’s Association. Yes Sir, Cooperative is the name of the Game! (image of 3 friends from Friends Group [2] ) But ANN (Author Not Named) mixed sour corn news with sweet banana news in Amai Manabilang – and, later in the text, mentioned the farmers’ expressed request for a farm-to-market road, FMR. I see that this is really a mixed-up report that does not try to empathize with the farmers’ problems exce

I am a UP alumnus, UPLB ’65, son of a farmer and I know of a lazy way to grow your own food. I’m thinking of the public campus of UP Diliman for cultivating gardens such as those above to show passers-by how easy it is to grow a garden – as long as you have a place (superimposed image, Ruth Stout’s book Gardening Without Work from Amazon [1] ). 2 books for the price of none! Now, here’s Book 2 with many and much little works to do: Above image, Facebook sharing: Lindsay Sheehan’s little red book of ideas [2] , published, 26 January 2020, Natural Living Ideas ). Here are the titles of her little free notes: 41 Cheats To Garden For (Almost) Free   1. Assess Soil Texture For Free   2. Assess Soil PH For Free   3. Humus   4. Grass Clippings   5. Leaf Mold   6. Seed Saving   7. Seed Swaps   8. Seed Library   9. Plant Cuttings 10. Division 11. Regrow Your Food 12. Perennial Plants 13. Foliage Plants From Scraps 14. Smother The Site 15. Borrow It 16. Freebies 17. Get A Good Deal 18. See

Yes, under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie, it’s time for the Department of Agriculture, DA, to revolutionize its way of handling science, especially now that we have seen how the lockdown has turned things topsy-turvy. A digital DA – digital knowledge – would be a desirable new normal because it could be anywhere everywhere anytime. Ready to serve . Like the cellphone. Via the cellphone. (main image my Windows 10 accidental collage; cellphone image from Vecteezy [1] ) The main image shows parts of the town plaza of my hometown Asingan in Pangasinan, where the building in the middle is the headquarters of our Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Coop. Looking at Nagkaisa now, I see any coop building as the location for the training following my reinvention of the Farmer Field School, FFS into the Farmer Filled School, FFS 2 (see my essay, “Farmer Filled School, FFS² – My Reinvention Of The FFS Of 1987 [ 2] ,” 13 June 2020, THiNK Journalism, Digital ). I see FFS² as the area of

Pinoy farmers, arise!  You have nothing to lose but your chains to your beloved but misLed farmer leaders and your popular but misGuided farm magazines & online media! Those are the shocking truths, and it took me 13 years to see them and say them. Finally, the ugly aggie truths will set us free! (superimposed protest images from Vector State[1]) When I became international consulting writer for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, based in India, under the leadership of Director General William Dar/Manong Willie, who is now PH Secretary of Agriculture, I began to know about farmers not being able to escape the poverty trap, and I started to realize: How our mass media kept our farmers ignorant, actually. How our farmer leaders kept their farmers ignorant about the same things. How? They were all ignorant of the same things! We have to pity our farmers who have remained quite poor despite quite rich sciences, technologies and systems.

You know the WHO now, don’t you? They are the ones who made a mess of the world by missing out on the coronavirus. Now I’m reading this WHO intelligence-related advice (Facebook sharing): 7 Biggest Brain Damaging Habits       1.      Missing breakfast. 2.      Sleeping late. 3.      High sugar consumption. 4.      More sleeping specially at morning. 5.      Eating meal while watching TV or computer. 6.      Wearing cap/scarf or socks while sleeping. 7.      Habit of blocking/stoping urine. Look at that! The WHO is not very good in grammar. (1) It should read, “brain-damaging habits” – hyphen necessary. (2) It should read, “stopping,” not “stoping;” “urination,” not “urine.” You can say I violate all those 7 brain-damaging habits – except the 7 th . I have no such habit. So I miss breakfast. When that happens, it becomes brunch, breakfast and lunch at the same time. I sleep late, sometimes very late. I drink coffee every so often, and it’s not black – it’s Nescafe Brown . I just

For the first time in my 79 years, this month I became aware of how much urban agriculture can contribute to PH’s national growth along with rural agriculture . Nobody is too old to learn. The source: Early this June had come out the 8-page SEARCA Policy Paper 2020-3 authored by Rico C Ancog et al. titled “Policy Imperatives To Promote Urban Agriculture In Response To Covid-19 Pandemic Among Local Government Units In The Philippines.” Urban agriculture, or urban farming, or urban gardening. It is the practice of producing food in and around city areas; it can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agroforestry, beekeeping, and horticulture (Wikipedia [1] ). On Monday, 22 June, according to ANN [2] , at the main office of the Department of Agriculture, DA, Secretary of Agriculture William Dar and SEARCA Director Glenn B Gregorio signed a Memorandum of Agreement, formalizing a partnership in establishing urban gardens under the Urban Agriculture Program, UAP, being implemented b

Every once in a while, on Facebook, somebody asks, seriously: Should Agriculture be made part of the high school curriculum? My repeated reaction to that often-asked question had been: “Boring.” Now, let me tell you that I am an Agriculturist, a graduate of UP Los Baños, with a BSA major in Ag Ed, so I should be one of the last ones to not welcome Agriculture in High School. (Images: Facebook sharing by Antonio D Torres; electric bulbs from Brand Reinvention [1] , which I posterized; class scene from Brookings [2] ) Today? Yes! Now, how to offer agriculture in high school without boring the boys & girls? I reinvent High School. Reinvention means “the act or an instance of replacing a product, etc with an entirely new version” (Collins English Dictionary). The fluorescent light is a reinvention of the bulb, the rotavator a reinvention of the plow; and the Internet a reinvention of the library. So now I have reinvented Agriculture in High School! AHS should now be the source o

Above, this Facebook sharing of Philmaize Kamais, PK, tells me that the PK people have not learned their lesson in history: They are living in modern times but are ignoring the living past. The sharing says: Pesticides guide for corn farmer. Beware FAW (fall army worm). Let’s keep our vigilance in our corn fields. May God bless our farmers, our country. What follows is PK’s long list of chemicals to fight the FAW. But why does PK begin the advice with Modern Control and not with Historic Natural Pest Management, NPM? Why make the Chemical your first choice when you have the Natural? Now then, with the long list of chemicals to fight the FAW, I have superimposed the image of a trap crop (from Agripedia [1] ) – all PK and/or any of those corn farmers has to do is look for a crop that attracts the armyworm more than the corn, and you have your savior of a plant – no chemicals involved. That’s NPM. Why is PK happy to resolve the problem of the FAW but not unhappy with the unhealthy

We need Italians to tell us what we Filipinos need!? Above: A foreign journal has just published the results of a study with Manila respondents, “Challenges Of Communicating Science: Perspectives From The Philippines [1] ” ( Journal Of Science Communication, vol 19, issue 01, 2020, 21 pages), published by MediaLab of Italy. The authors, Kamila Navarro and Merryn McKinnon, conducted an online survey and semi-structured, investigative interviews, “to examine the challenges faced by local scientists and science communicators when publicly communicating science in the Philippines.” And there, right at the conceptual stage of the study, lies the problem! In case you did not notice, I repeat… “scientists and science communicators when publicly communicating science in the Philippines.” Those scientists and communicators are in the academic and research institutions – they are not media people. They are communicating hard science – they are not popularizing it!   ( (superimposed image

This is a reverse salutation – I The BlogFather am greeting you, “Happy Father’s Day.” Thanks be to God! Because right now I am the one to point out to you the gifts I already have, given by me to myself slowly over the last 45 years: Any of which I can help you gift yourself, if you want hard enough! Starting on Innocents Day 1985, when I began to be taught by a lady at the office of Director Elpidio L Rosario of the Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute, FSSRI, of UP Los Baños. Thanks, FSSRI! Dig my digital gifts: (1)    Writing . I didn’t know I had this gift until I was a Senior in high school at the Rizal Junior College, RJC (HS Dept), in Asingan, Pangasinan, when I joined the contest to select the Tagalog Editor for our would-be RJC newsletter. I won! Over someone who was a Tagalog, a relative of the owner of RJC – and so I told myself, “This is my hidden talent. I am going to make myself the best of myself as a writer.” I was already then a voracious reader of Engl