“Prioritize Agriculture To Achieve Zero Poverty Rate” – Presidentiable Bongbong Marcos. Yes Sir! And To Save Us From Climate Change, I Am Looking At Organic Agriculture

Since last month, I have been enticing any of the Presidentiables to pay close attention to agriculture (see my essay, “Vision Impossible, PH Presidentiables!? Well, You Have To Use Your Inner Sight, Insight. Do Not Allow The Negatives To Negate Your Campaign!” 06 Feb 2022, Towards A New Eden, Blogspot.com). No luck until today.

In that essay, I emphasized farms & farmers, and organic farming. Not surprising, as I am an alumnus of UP Los Baños, BSA Ag Edu 1965 – an agriculturist who is a teacher. More appropriately, an extensionist, having concocted my own theory of communication for development of villages in the 21^st century (CoViD21) last Tuesday, 23 Nov 2021.

Yes, CoViD21. I’m excited, really, that a Presidentiable has spoken of Agriculture as #1 in his priority. Daniza Fernandez  says “Prioritize Agriculture To Achieve Zero Poverty Rate – Marcos” (20 March 2022, Inquirer.net). I am a farmer’s son from Asingan in Eastern Pangasinan, so I know farmer poverty. We were not poor, but sometimes we did not have any dish except rice – we settled on bagoong (salted fish), sometimes with onions. And when I attended my grade school class, I brought with me about a tablespoon of molasses powder for snack.

In the countryside, poverty is when your family can hardly meet the necessities of life in food, clothing, and medicine. Farmer poverty is when your father farmer has to borrow money from a usurer in order to buy fertilizer and pesticide. Farmer poverty is when your family has to borrow money from the usurer, again, in-between harvests of rice. Farmer poverty is when your family has to borrow money from the usurer, again, to pay the school fees of your child. Farmer poverty is when your family has to borrow from the usurer, again, to pay for the medical expense when someone gets sick.

We have 5 million farmers. How many poor families are there among our farmers? As of 17 Dec 2021, we are looking at the “Proportion Of Poor Filipinos Registered At 23.7 Percent In The First Semester Of 2021” (Philippine Statistics Authority, psa.gov.ph): “This translates to 26.14 million Filipinos who lived below the poverty threshold estimate at P12,082 for a family of 5 per month.”

That’s P56/person/day, or P18.67/meal. You don’t know poor until you are, or have neighbors who are.

Rappler’s story has this title: “Climate Change Creating ‘New Poor’ In PH” (Rappler.com). Also. But more the other way around – it is the Filipino farmers who create climate change in the country because of their wrong practice of agriculture.

The prevailing mode, chemical agriculture (CA), is the one that creates greenhouse gases that help exacerbate climate change.

For agriculture to ease up climate change, BBM should see organic agriculture (OA) being adopted throughout the Philippines immediately. OA grows incomes and healthy foods and pleasant climes!

Above images: Top from Asia Media, asiamedia.lmu.edu, bottom from Rappler , both images I redesigned to indicate a nascent revolution – necessary! @517