Is This The Morning Of A New PH Nationalism As Well As Dedicated Journalism In Agriculture Cultivating Farmers’ Progress?

Happily: From my observation since 2019, PH Agriculture is looking good – we are looking at the sunrise of farming – despite Covid-19 etc. Unhappily: At the same time, we are looking at the private media’s overall journalism that is hardly dedicated to prosperity in the lives of Filipino farm families. And no presidential or senatorial candidate is talking about agriculture, the #1 industry in the Philippines.

On Facebook today, Saturday, 28 February 2022, Maris Diokno is un/happily sharing her father Jose W Diokno’s legacies of Human Rights and Nationalism – “Remembering Dad” – saying, with I noting Maris’ brother Chel Diokno is running for the office of Senator:

The victory we aspire for in May 2022 is not about ourselves but about causes way beyond us: justice and equity and dignity as human beings and as a people – in Dad’s words, “a nation full of hope and full of joy, full of life and full of love.”

Happily, as a journalist and an agriculturist (UP '65), instantly and wholeheartedly, when I read “a nation full of hope and full of joy, full of life and full of love,” I think of Agriculture. Unhappily, I think of the millions of Filipino farmers Not full of hope, Not full of joy, Not full of life, and Not full of love!

All those 4 Nots on Filipino farming not enjoyed by farmers, I blame on journalists not full of hope, not full of joy, not full of life, and not full of love when they write!

Concrete example: Since March 2019 at least, I have been googling & writing about Philippine Agriculture – and I have not found any private journalist or opinion writer mentioning even in passing current Secretary of Agriculture William Dar’s “New Thinking About Agriculture” along with the paradigms providing its “infrastructure.” I am quite sure not oneof our PH journalists knows what the new thinking is, what are those paradigms and how many – and how do they relate to Philippine agriculture as envisioned by Mr Dar.

If PH journalists do not relate to the bigger picture, how can they be trusted to deliver good news on agriculture?!

Necessarily, PH journalists will have to learn what I call “CoViD21” – from Communication for Village Development – the “21” being a reminder of 2 things: (a) Covid-19, and (b) that I thought of it in 2021. Better late than never! CoViD21 is my optimistic view of the coming PH Agriculture – that Organic Agriculture will enrich more farming families and villages.

If you have been reading me, you know organic agriculture equals regenerative agriculture, our saving grace – fundamentally, we restore the health of the earth. Regenerative agriculture is our Samson defeating with a single stone 3 Goliaths: farmer poverty, unhealthy foods, and climate change.@517

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