It Takes A Village To Make A Healthy Soil

Annie Leonard & Tom Newmark say, "The Story of Soil Is The Story Of All Of Us" (22 April 2019, yes! yesmagazine.org). They are talking Science – isn't that talking Bible too?! 

In Genesis 1, NRSV, God made humankind in his image and likeness, Adam and Eve, and allowed them to "have dominion over" the fish, birds, cattle, wild animals, "every creeping thing" – that is why it was called the Garden of Eden, or Paradise. But they took God's word literally, and did not allow the soil to multiply itself by itself! So, poor banished children of Adam and Eve, we lost Paradise because we failed to learn conservation.

Ms Annie and Mr Newmark quote Wendell Berry as saying that the soil is "the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all." They say:

Ninety-five percent of our food is grown in it, it stores and filters our water and provides a home for the majority of life on the planet, and yet most of us rarely pay much attention to it. We dump poisonous chemicals on it, inject it with synthetic nutrients, slash it with plows, strip it of its natural diversity, and bury our trash in it.

Brilliantly, if not intentionally, in those 65 words, the female and male authors have summarized modern agriculture.

The soil grows 95% of our food, but we poison it, inject bad nutrients into it, ravage it with our plows, replace biodiversity with single crops, and poison it with our trash.

When did it occur, that change from Nurture to Vulture? Ms Annie & Mr Newmark say it could have been when humans invented Agriculture, or at "the Age of Enlightenment, when Nature became viewed as an object to be observed and controlled." Personally, I think the break from Nature began when Adam, not Eve, began to think Science over Nature. Adam had to investigate all things, to prove a hypothesis or pursue an assertion. Too intelligent for Paradise.

Today, even as Adams or Eves are doing Science, the Earth is prevented from doing its work naturally!

Ms Annie & Mr Newmark say when you promote soil health, you also promote community health. And when we nourish the very soil that continues to nourish us, we also nourish our village.

Why is plowing the field bad? The authors say when you expose the microorganisms that cause organic decay and expose all that life to oxygen and sunlight, when it rains, the good nutrients run off with the water.

Ms Annie & Mr Newmark say there should be permanent ground cover where we grow our crops to "optimize solar cycles and carbon capture" just as forests do.

Separately, Ms Annie says composting is the magic wand (my view) for turning organic waste into organic fertilizer; this is a practice that benefits the community – the village gets clean, and the soil gets dirty with rich, natural materials as healthy food for the crops and, ultimately, the humans.

We humans poison ourselves when we poison the soil where we grow our food.517

To Solve Climate Change, Look Beneath Your Feet – Jean-Paul Courtens

"Healthy soils for a healthy climate" – in 6 words, Jean-Paul Courtens gives us a simple guide towards resolving climate change. Above image is from the email linking to his article "What Have We Learned? Healthy Soils For A Healthy Climate" (02 March 2019, Real Organic Project, realorganicproject.org).

The email introduces Mr Courtens' video talk in these words: "Watch biodynamic farmer Jean-Paul Courtens of Roxbury Farm in Kinderhook, New York speak about (agriculture's) pivotal role in reversing Climate Change."

"Agriculture's pivotal role in reversing Climate Change." I have always believed that,if not said it in those words, since 2007, months before Al Gore along with the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize. (See my essay, "The Yankee Dawdle. On Discovery Sorghum, The Great Climate Crop," 04 February 2007, ICRISAT Watch, blogspot.com.).

As I write this, I check on Facebook and here comes my friend Joby Arandela sharing about regenerative agriculture, with the 6–layer graphic that begins to say: "For a farm in drought, the carbon left in the soil can be as low as 0.5–1%." You're not communicating, my dear – you're only scaring me.

I google for "regenerative agriculture" (regenerativeagriculturedefinition.com), and it begins to tell me about its "4 principles" – I find them too complicated for me, sorry! So back to Mr Courtens, who is now saying:

It's like what we need here is a "future thinking" – thinking outside the box. And we have to come up with something that will allow nature and help nature to come back in the equilibrium that we have disrupted.

It is the soil that will allow nature and help nature to come back. And Mr Courtens points to organic farming, "as it was intended is based on the fundamental principle of integrity; that everything in nature is interdependent, and that a farm is a living organism."

I remember Edward H Faulkner telling me something like that in his book Soil Development that I read in the 1960s, that the soil is, or should be, alive – alive with minute and not-so-minute plants and animals. Only a live soil is rich. Only a live soil will "help nature to come back in the equilibrium that we have disrupted."

Mr Courtens asks, "So isn't it safe to conclude that a healthy farm has most of its land covered?... And the best way to do that of course, is to cover it with grass and legumes and put some animals on it."

Even without animals and without manure from somewhere else, my soil should still be healthy with grasses and legumes growing. Trash farming is how Mr Faulkner put it. He taught me to incorporate weeds and crop refuse on the top soil, rotavating them with shallow bites of the blades so that the soil and plant matter are cut into pieces and mixed together to make a living mulch all over the field.

How important is that? Mr Courtens says 1% organic matter on 1.6 billion hectares is 102 billion tons of carbon dioxide sequestered.

Climate change, we've got you covered!517

PH Will Never Rise From Rice Alone – William Dar

First, I'm sorry, but the article by Louise Maureen Simeon on 15 April 2019, "DAR: Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful" (The Philippine Star, philstar.com), is incorrect on 2 counts. One, DAR is notthe Department of Agrarian Reform that the headline implies – rather, it is William Dar; and I happen to know personally that Mr Dar is not "a former agrarian reform secretary" but a former Secretary of Agriculture. 

Next, the story has what I call a VIP – very important point – in the very title of the article itself: "Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful." Filipino farmers have always built their farming around rice, rice, rice – and we never got out of that circle. Or, should I say, the brightest agriculturist never got to teach out of the box to PH farmers in the field.

As a point of view, "Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful" has not been seen up to now except by an international expert in our midst, who is also a Filipino (if an Ilocano like me!) Mr Dar has been the most admired Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, which is based in India, so much so that the Indians retained him for 3 consecutive terms as DG, from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2014.

Miss Louise quotes Mr Dar as saying, "Not just in this administration, (but) over the last 30 years, producing (more and more) rice has been the goal and they did not give a chance for high-value agriculture to succeed."

As a guide to criticism, by saying "Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful." Mr Dar means if we continue to view farming as being around rice and not much else, even if we were quite successful, we will always be a One-Eyed Giant – strong but with an incomplete view of the enemy.

Mr Dar said:

Even DA now, their mindset is only in (rice) production, they are still blinded and yet to change it to agri-business which is supposed to be the right approach.

We have to teach the DA people to be business-minded first of all!

As a guide to action, "Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful" points to an option in farming that has always been there:

Rice-based is multiple cropping: Rice Plus. It is the Plus that counts!

As a BS Agriculture graduate from the UP College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños, and being a wide reader, I know that rice-based is growing rice with any combination of these: eggplant, tomato, cassava, sweet potato, any other vegetable.

Mr Dar was speaking at the journalism seminar sponsored by the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines & San Miguel Corporation, SMC. I know the SMC is also a benefactor of the Binhi Awards by the Philippine Agricultural Journalists, so I would like to challenge SMC management to gently but firmly demand that those PH journalists learn & disseminate more about the business of multiple cropping.

What's the one business sense of multiple cropping?
Win some, lose some!517

For PH Farmers To Thrive, They Should Be I-Oriented!

I saw the above tarpaulin in my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan that I shot at 7:45 AM Wednesday, 20 March 2019. The sign says, "Pangasinan Entrepreneurs Development Association Inc," PEDAI, and the group is based in Malanay, Santa Barbara, Pangasinan. In Santa Barbara, we have the Agricultural Training Institute, ATI's Regional Training Center I, meaning RTC for Region 1. This is relevant to note, as the Ilocos Region covers 4 provinces: Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union, and Pangasinan, and the 9 cities within: Alaminos, Batac, Candon, Dagupan, Laoag, San Carlos, San Fernando, Urdaneta, and Vigan (en.wikipedia.org). 

Today, I'm looking at ATI as digital, or it should be. I mean, any farmer should not need to travel from Asingan to Santa Barbara, or go to town to ask the Municipal Agriculturist for information & insights. What's the cellphone for?!

Yes, that tarpaulin tells me about agribusiness. And my favorite columnist writes about that very subject today Thursday, 18 April 2019: "Tourism, Agribusiness And Digitization" (Manila Times, manilatimes.net).

I know that the Philippines owes Department of Tourism, DoT, Secretary Berna Romulo-Puyat for pushing for the brilliant idea of farm tourism. Mr Dar says:

(In 2018), the country’s tourist arrivals went up by 7.65 percent from the 6.62 million recorded in 2017. Sustaining the growth of tourist arrivals in the country can make tourism a major component for inclusive growth in the Philippines, especially if it forms part of the tourism-agribusiness-digitization paradigm.

And that is what I mean when the PH farmer should be I-Oriented (my coinage), as follows:

Income-oriented, IO.
Internet-oriented, IO².

The PH farmer is returns-oriented, not aware of his need to be IO; nor Internet-oriented, not aware of his need to be IO² too. Agribusiness and digitization are what he needs to get much more from farming.

Mr Dar says:

Agribusiness is definitely the only way for the farming (sector) in the Philippines to level up, and this means putting (an) end to the old paradigm that is anchored on traditional farming.

And how do we encourage that? Mr Dar says:

The old paradigm also emphasized supplying the local market with largely raw food products with very little or no support or incentives given to tap the export market.
Agripreneurship and agribusiness go hand-in-hand, and… the farmers themselves should also be encouraged to become agripreneurs.

Our farmers must go beyond supplying unprocessed food and be incentivized into growing produce processed into products for export.

Even so, we must make "agribusiness inclusive," as Mr Dar puts it. And how to do that? He says, "I recommend the Inclusive Market-Oriented Development (IMOD) that was part of the crosscutting strategies of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics when I headed it from 2000 to 2014." I know IMOD, as I was international consulting writer for ICRISAT 2007-2014; in IMOD, farmers get their fair share from the value chain, being their own middlemen.

Working for IMOD, and being IO and IO² are the secrets of agribusiness ATI must learn, then digitize, to make available to PH farmers nationwide simultaneously!517 

We Are Not Rallying Behind Our Rice Farmers! – William Dar

We are behind our PH farmers – and we are not rallying!

President of the national movement called InangLupa (Motherland) and Manila Times columnist William Dar has an urgent double call:

Let us rally behind our rice farmers.
And we should not waste time!

Those are the main messages of Part 2 of his column on the subject, "Let Us Rally Behind Our Rice Farmers," that appears on the 11 April 2019 issue of the Manila Times online edition (manilatimes.net).

This is a call to arms, as the Implementing Rules & Regulations, IRR, for RA 11203 or the Rice Tariffication Act, was signed Friday last week yet. He says:

I must say that the signing of the IRR for RA 11203 should be the starting point for our government and the bureaucracy, the private sector, civil service groups, nongovernment organizations, the academe, and the scientific community to rally behind our smallholder rice farmers and the whole industry itself.

And why is that? We have to protect our rice farmers from the harsh competition of Asian rices – because PH rice is very expensive. Compare these costs of production of rice:

PH rice P12/kilo
Thai rice P8/kilo
Viet rice P6/kilo.

How can PH rice farmers compete with their extremely high cost of production, which is double that of Vietnam farmers!

So, Mr Dar is calling on everyone – government, private sector, civil service groups, nongovernment organizations, academe, and scientific community – to rally behind our poor rice farmers and the whole rice industry.

Mr Dar says:

While the projects and programs under RCEF should be the anchors to make the country’s rice industry competitive, let us also give importance to existing initiatives for the industry that are undertaken by the government, particularly the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Science and Technology (DoST), for our smallholder rice farmers.

As an agriculturist and a crusading writer myself, I am interested in those initiatives of the DA and DoST, among others, that focus on helping our rice farmers become competitive.

Meaning: Our rice farmers must reduce their cost of production drastically.

As I have already written, "It's the systems, stupid!" (08 April 2019, "SAKA Near UP Diliman As A Dual Study In Guerrilla Gardening & Journalism," blogspot.com). Systems, plural. To quote myself from there:

The production system:The inputs are expensive: hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides. Modern agriculture has been designed in favor of the chemical companies, not the poor farmers.

The marketing system:It has always been rigged in favor of the middlemen and so, with farmers, we will always have the poor with us!

I forgot to mention the input of irrigation water. Mr Dar says, "Since rice cultivation is water intensive, addressing the issue of irrigation is of utmost importance and much needs to be done immediately." Yes. But while you the farmer are waiting for irrigation water, here is my simpler & faster advice:

Truly enrich your soil with organic matter and this will take care of the moisture needs of your crops, despite El Niño.517 

PH Rice: When The Budget Is The Least Of Your Worries!

PH Congressman Leonardo Montemayor shares on Facebook the link to the BusinessMirror article "'Government Has No Money For P10-Billion Rice Fund'" by Cai U Ordinario & Jasper Emmanuel Y Arcalas (10 April 2019, businessmirror.com.ph). The report says:

Farmers may have to wait until the third quarter at the earliest to benefit from a fund that will consist of tariffs from rice imports, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

That is what NEDA Regional Development Office Assistant Secretary Mercedita A Sombilla is saying. Miss Mercedita is talking about the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, RCEF, that is supposed to be generated to help PH farmers become Asia-competitive. She is saying there are no funds available right now.

Actually, even if 10 times P10 billion were available right now as the competitiveness fund, PH farmers are still losers! Because the PH government has no Roadmap to Asian Rice Competitiveness.

Without that roadmap, we know where we are going?

In Lewis Carroll's story Alice In Wonderland, here is an exchange:

Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.

Our PH aggie officials are modern-day Alices in Wonderland who don't know where they're going, but they want to get there!

In that same BusinessMirror story, the Federation of Free Farmers, FFF, has "expressed dismay over the apparent lack of source for the P10-billion RCEF." FFF National Manager Raul Q Montemayor says the lack of funds shows that the government is "already shortchanging the farmers." I say, not really! The government is simply not thinking right for the farmers.

I've been writing about it several times already. This is how bad it looks when it comes to production cost of rice:

PH rice P12/kilo
Thai rice P8/kilo
Viet rice P6/kilo.

So, when the rice imports come in, anytime now, who among us Filipinos are going to buy local rice?

PH officials are simply thinking of subsidizing the farmers and, meanwhile, PH farmers are simply waiting for those subsidies. Nobody is doing something about farmer entrepreneurship.

If you want to help PH farmers become competitive in their own country, stop subsidizing them and start educating them how to be entrepreneurs, how to become business-minded, how to cut costs here and there. That's where those P10 billion should go.

Still: Even without any single peso out of those P10 billion for RCEF, even today we can now teach the farmers how to become competitive:

Cut costs of production – use inexpensive but effective fertilizers, and use inexpensive but effective pesticides. And learn to grow rice even with minimal water. In short, turn to organic from your inorganic ways!

How do I know all that? I'm an agriculturist, UP '65; I'm a teacher; I'm a wide reader; I'm the son of a farmer. My father did not know how to cut costs, but I thank God the son rises after the dark night and is sharing the light!517

PH – Growing More Rice, Growing For Less

You can see rice tarrification as a negative, but you can also see it as a positive.

That is exactly how InangLupa Movement President William Dar sees it. He explains his position in his column "Let Us Rally Behind Our Rice Farmers." Part 1 (04 April 2019, Manila Times, manilatimes.net):

After careful study and analysis, I see RA 11203 as a blessing to the country's rice industry, as it will also force the bureaucracy to rethink its strategy towards the industry, and put in place policies, programs and projects to truly make rice farming in the Philippines truly productive and competitive.

Rice tarrification has been forced upon us by international law; we have to follow the guidelines of the World Trade Organization, WTO, of which the Philippines is a member. But we must protect our rice from the competition of other Southeast Asian rices because now rice importation has been liberalized, and we know that Philippine rice is the most expensive to produce in Asia! As I have already written, quoting from another column of Mr Dar, these are the prices of rices: PH rice P12/kilo, Thailand rice P8/kilo, and Vietnam rice P6/kilo (10 March 2019, "PH Rice Tariffication Law – Billions For Buildup, But Not One Cent For Business!" Journalism For Development, blogspot.com). Like I said there, "Yes Sir, expensively produced PH rice cannot compete with Asean rices even in its own territory!"

Mr Dar says today:

Now is the time to rally behind our smallholder farmers to make our rice industry competitive vis-à-vis our Southeast Asian counterparts. I am strongly positive and enthusiastic about this possibility.

I myself have been trying to wake up the sleepy heads of our national rice officials to help Filipino rice farmers decrease their costs and increase their incomes (see my essay "PhilRice, How About Listening To The Ladies & Making Filipino Farmers Much Happier?" 07 March 2019, Journalism For Development, blogspot.com). The ladies are willing to help the gentlemen become business-minded.

Why is PH rice so expensive to produce anyway? Mr Dar says, "Obviously, the pursuit of rice self-sufficiency in the past decades could be faulted for the high production cost of palay." That is to say, "Never mind the cost, we need to produce more rice!"

There is something good and something bad in the liberalization of rice importation. Mr Dar says, "I categorically agree that rice imports will help lower and stabilize the prices of the commodity in the local market, thus contributing to lower inflation." That is good for the rice consumers; that is bad for the rice farmers – if they don't wake up and drastically cut their total cost of production!

Above image: With hybrid rice, PH farmers can become competitive, but they have to reduce their costs of farming.

Now, here's the possible solution as well as the possible problem. Mr Dar says:

I believe funds are better allocated to farmers of the crop who have the potential to become as competitive as their counterparts in Southeast Asia.

That is thinking inorganic farming – I am thinking organic farming.517