USE NEW EDUCATION & OFW CAPITAL
TO URGENTLY LET AGRICULTURE CATCH UP WITH INDUSTRY
By: Arnulfo ‘Cocoy’ Yu Laniba
Agape Foundation (Agasoft)
Email: cocoy777@yahoo.com Wednesday, November 28, 2006, Badbad Oriental, Loon, Bohol, Philippines –
The world pays homage to the Chinese for their wise saying, “Give a man a fish and you fed him for a day, but teach a man how to fish and you will have fed him for a lifetime.” America’s consulting firms, for example, have adopted this saying as their guiding principles in nurturing business enterprises and organizations.
The world, and Filipinos in particular, will again thank the Chinese sages for quite another great saying that has shone in importance and guided training seminars all over the Philippines, to paraphrase: “If you plan for a year, plant a seed [grain]; if you plan for 10 years, plant a tree; if you plan 100 years, educate the people. By planting a seed, you reap once, by planting a tree you will reap 10fold, and by educating the people, you will reap 100fold.”
What are the lessons we can draw from this great proverb?
First, we can see three types of period: short-term or immediate, medium-term, and long-term.
Second, as we know in life, we can not neglect the first one because it refers to our daily wage or food such as grains [seed], etc: immediate or else we die immediately.
Third, AND THIS IS WHERE FILIPINOS ARE WEAK OR LACKING: foresight, vision. We have to admit we do not realize fully the benefit of planting a tree and in educating our people. Yes, we do plant trees and also send our children to school to get education. But have only grasped 5% of the value of tree planting and education and so we barely give these two tasks PRIORITY. Our priority is the need of the BODY – the material, the SHORT-TERM. The medium and long-term, especially the eternal, receive minimal attention but often usually forgotten.
Fourth, WISER NATIONS LIKE JAPAN AND GERMANY AND THE U.S.A. SAW THE FAR FUTURE AND AIM THEIR DAILY ACTIONS ALSO TO THAT FAR FUTURE AND NOT JUST ON THE IMMEDIATE. RESULT: They are able to satisfy both immediate the future, medium-and long-term. What advantage does this approach has over the “present-only” mentality of short-sighted Filipinos? To answer this, let us use the tree, both lumber and the fruit tree. We Filipinos have not realized the great value a fruit tree farm or what we call orchard could have done to us. We only concentrated on planting short-term seeds such as corn, rice grains and other root crops. We really are “for-today-only” people. The fruit trees we had grown are so few that they also serve only our “for-today-only” and our selfishness “for-ourselves only’ mentality. We have missed the point – totally missed the main point, namely; That had we or our forefathers planted say, a hectare of orchard [e.g., 30 mangoes in a hectare], that would MAKE MIRACLES HAPPEN, namely: based in experience and authoritative estimates
[1], a family or now a clan with 30 mangoes would have the following income:
YEAR
GROSS INCOME OF 70% OF HARVEST
[NOTE: 30% are considered not sold to market]
10th
P 19,656.00
20th
P 78,938.00
30th
P 316,679.40
40th
P 506,181.90
50th
P 738,329.40
60th
P 1,084,482.00
If you knew that production cost would not exceed the P 7,000.00-mark, then, you will realize how much net profit you would have, as years roll by!
But what does that mean first to the planter, and then, next to his descendants?
If you planted them when you were 20 years old, then you would already be enjoying the benefits not later than in your 30th birthday and on to your 80th birthday when your 50 mango trees hit the million-mark sales!
There is no need to enumerate other benefits you can get from such CASH! Is there?
What I am more concerned about is to express my regret against our short-sighted forefathers, if only that is the way I can give vent to my sorrow: they looked after only for their own needs and neglected ours! That is why I’ve got an eroded, denuded and very poor land to farm – full of stones and no fruit tree to speak of or brag about!
Now, I am not a man who gets his full satisfaction in forever dwelling in the past and hurling blames. But I’ve got now the luxury of space and time to ATTACK THE MEMORY OF OUR MYOPIC FOREFATHERS – if that is one way I can motivate myself to abhor their practices and motivate you to take the way of the wise, such as that of Sony Corporation and other great Japanese companies that make a 250-year plan!
Their foolishness to accept the equally foolish superstition from the foolish Spaniards is one to be blamed. The Spaniard Catholic taught our naïve forefathers the superstition that mango and similar trees had power to shorten the lives of their planters. That is how these deceptive religious teachers interpreted the natural God-give capacity of these fruit trees to outlive their planters and benefit their descendants. “If you plan 10 years and want to harvest benefits beyond it,” may I rephrase the Chinese proverb, “manifold” or say, P1million after 60 years, then, plant a tree!”
Do you know that superstition was intended to cause us to be afraid of doing what was actually right and for our long-term good? The crafty Spaniards succeeded in implanting fear in our ancestors’ mind and heart and so they did not plant orchards, and so, they remained poor and sickly and therefore weak enough to remain slaves and a colonized people for over 300 years! That lead me to say, THAT IF WE ONLY PLANTED MANGOES WHE THE SPANIARDS CAME OR EVER BEFORE THEM, THEN, THEY WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO COLONIZE US, or NOT THAT LONG!
Fast forward to our time, IF WE HAD ONLY SUCH AN INHERITANCE FROM OUR RESPECTIVE GRANDFATHERS OR GREAT GRANDFATHERS, DO YOU THINK THAT P 1 MILLION A YEAR WOULD NOT HELP YOU OBTAIN THE EDUCATION YOU WANT, DEVELOP YOUR TALENTS TO THE MAXIMUM, CAPITALIZE WITHOUT LIMIT YOUR TALENT-BASED BUSINESS? Because we do not have 30 60-year-old mango trees today (or other fruit trees), we do not have the ‘free money’ for our education, development of our respective talents, capitalization of our businesses. As a matter of fact, we are being devoured by loan sharks – instead of getting rich ourselves, we become poorer due to the high interests of these loan sharks!!! Compare this to the condition where you have 30 mango trees, 60 years old each! With such a whooping amount, interest free, and not even to be repaid, and with the prospect of having the same amount every following year, DO YOU THINK YOU WILL MORE LIKELY FAIL IN YOUR LIFE AND BUSINESS?
I do not think so! Unless you are lazy. But laziness is due largely to not being able to do and pursue what you want or love, such as your hobby or talent. But by being able to focus on your talents (what you love), laziness is an impossibility.
Yes, you may prove this my statement: IN YOUR TALENT, LAZINESS IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY. For the heart is very diligent where it loves. If it loves music, then, it is very diligent.
So, the key to solve or overcome laziness, is to simply put the child or individual in where his heart loves! Another way of saying, simply awaken his dormant love. If you can do that, then, you can at the same time remove that man’s laziness.
Filipinos are known to be lazy. Even the late President Manuel L. Quezon once said: “Filipinos are not hard-working.”
The cause is the lack of love or the suppression of love. Aside from the evil group of greed, lust, pride, envy, hatred, revenge, the Love-group (e.g., compassion, mercy, kindness, sympathy, kindness, appreciation and the like) is the only worthwhile motivation. If you can awaken or put more love in his heart, then, the Filipino is at par with the most diligent man on earth! That’s for sure!
* * * * *
A few weeks ago, our Municipal Agriculture Office and the Office of the Mayor invited all 67 barangays in our town, Loon, to recruit one participant for the November 2006 – March 2007 Farmer Scientists Training Program (FSTP).
One qualification was that the participant-students should be 55 years old and below.
Here are the results:
Only 42 out of 67 complied and were able to send participants;
It was estimated that around 15 participants lied to be 55 years old and below; they were actually older than 55 years old;
A few younger participants have lands but are no longer presently farming them
What do these findings mean?
It means that only 27 or 40% barangays have farmers who are 55 years old and below
40 barangays or 60% have no more young farmers, aging 55 and below
What is more alarming is that these 27 barangays that have sent their 55-year-old-and-below have had difficulty finding at least one such farmer!? That is, they almost have no more young farmers!?
Age disqualification is the main reason for the other barangays’ failure to send a representative. The tuition is free. Lunch is free. Classes are only done on Tuesdays for 18 consecutive weeks. Transportation and ‘appearance’ stipend are given. Coastal barangays still have farms. Even writing supplies were supplied by the MAO. So, there seems to be no reason why a barangay could not send at least one participant.
So the conclusion that THERE SEEMS TO BE NO LONGER YOUNG FARMERS is true.
This statistic serves as a confirmation of an already on-going known fact and phenomenon in every barangay: the youth have been abandoning farming as occupation. For decades now, young people have left to the cities to study and work. Some went abroad to work.
They had left farm and old parents behind. Others have left wives and children. Some have visited but soon went back to the cities and overseas. Most of them yearned to return home after they experienced the hard life in the cities and abroad, but could not. Some have totally forgotten and decided never to return to their former home in the rural village.
Most of the farmers left in the barangays are over 55 years old. Over and over again, you can interview these old grandmas and grandpas and they would tell you almost the same sigh: “What will happen when we will have passed away!”
Since my house is located beside the road, I see old farmers passing me by, while I work in my computer. There have been countless times when I stood by the road to chat with anyone of them. And they expressed their great sorrow and worry by saying: “What will happen when we are no longer around?”
Many of the few rural men left have shifted to other works, such as carpentry or construction. Most youth are studying. It seems to be good, but the education our youth are given would confine them to ‘employment’ – poor labor. The offices they are aiming for do not exist. Colleges and universities are churning out half-baked engineers, accounting graduates who can’t install accounting systems nor balance the books. There is an endless and almost infinite list of graduates waiting for ‘the office to work’ or the ‘classroom to teach’ or the ship that will hire them.
The space of the city is being congested by these migrants from the rural villages seeking employment. There seems to be no more space left in the city, while lands in the countryside become vacant, despite the fast increase of overall population.
Though education aims to cultivate the barren mind, it seems to be that our type of education has planted the plants of pride, vanity and materialism. The batch college educated Filipinos have spurned the land. They have mocked agriculture which is one of the most essential foundations of economic prosperity and stability.
Also, the salaries which this education has given our graduates are disappointing; our salaried college educated workers are not even enough for their own. Aging parents have been disappointed to have discovered that the education in which they placed their hope is a farce messiah. They are not saved from poverty after their sons and daughters graduated from college. They are instead subjected to double sorrow: their children have left them; and their children have not lifted them out of poverty.
I have to say: SOMETHING IS WRONG – VERY WRONG – WITH OUR EDUCATION. IT IS NOT LIBERATING US FROM POVERTY. IT IS INSTEAD CONFINING US TO SLAVERY! BETTER WERE OUR FOREFATHERS WHO WERE FREE IN THEIR FARMS!
But now, how can we go back to the farm? We have two very difficult obstacles: 1) our education or mental skill or knowledge is not about agriculture; we do not fit to the farm; 2) our land, long time abandoned and long time abused with chemicals (e.g., fertilizers and pesticides) and logging (forest destruction), has lost its ecology or capacity to grow food, has lost its ability to feed and sustain us!
MISCULTIVATED MIND
Our agriculture-lecturers repeatedly told us: There is no barren land, only barren mind.
This is surely true. And this statement is surely aimed to encourage us to go back to the farm and cultivate it. The saying is aimed to “insult” us so as to move us to never mind the external obstacles or causes of discouragement of farming, such as high cost of production input (e.g., labor, fertilizers, pesticides, even seeds are soon to be purchased when our native seeds are gone), very poor soil, low market prices, and not yet known to many: the high health risks of chemically-fertilized or grown or modified plants or grains.
Mental laziness and ignorance, not external factors, are the main cause of leaving the land.
I say “Yes, partly”.
There are real causes that discourage our sons and daughters from farming:
First, is mental-emotional cause – read: attitudes -- values.
I see it is the attraction of the city – read: materialism and its related personal beautification – that made us lazy to farm. It is the low esteem attached to being a farmer – the dirty hands, the bad ‘sweat’ odor, the rancid clothes, the wrinkles, the sun-burned skin, the lack of sophistication, the absence of appliances at home, the loneliness in the farm versus the sounds and the attractions of the city – these are discouraging our modern sons and daughters from going to farm.
City and education are still connected to rich and luxury; whereas, farming, except to large modernized ones, has become synonymous to sufferings, poverty, and deprivation of the joys, pleasures, and leisure of life that they enjoy in the cities.
Even the few women who were born in the farm, grew, married and left to the farm have this secret longing to live a life of luxury that the city and college education have offered. But I overheard them say, “What could we do but resign to our fate?”
But not many of today’s younger generation accept that. They are seeing a way out. They consider college education as a way to escape poverty in the mountain village and to enjoy life in the city.
But those of us from the province (promdis) who went to the city or have gone to the city have found out that: CITY PROMISES WERE MOSTLY ILLUSIORY!
· What the city calls ‘happiness’, ‘pleasure’ and ‘leisure’ are not really joy;
· Most of the city-based workers are imprisoned in a kind of works where they do not grow, are imprisoned or where they are misfits and find no happiness; they just do it to survive;
· While working life in the city is a struggle, retirement is worse! If you continue to stay as an old man in the city, then chances are that you are a dead while still alive. For there is no worse thing to ever happen to a retiring man and find no place of quiet and serenity that only a rural setting can provide! If during our working life, we did not have time for God, how unfortunate and cursed we are to find no time and no quiet place to spend our sunset years in useful meditation, self-introspection and in communion with the higher power!
So our challenge today is HOW TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE IN THE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE WHERE MOST OF US CAME FROM.
First to change is our attitude from hating the farm to loving it. But thankfully, there are still many of us who still love the farm and long for it. Their bad experience in the city or their bad findings and conclusions about the city and modern education and living, especially the more they get older, is intensifying their longing to go back to the farm from where they came.
If this is so – that is, if the right attitude towards the farm has been restored at least among the more mature ones who are still in the cities, then, one thing we can do is: INSTITUTIONALIZE OR PERFECT THE SYSTEM OF BRINGING THEM BACK TO THE FARM!
How?
I have at least four ways:
First, ALLOCATE AT LEAST 10 YEARS OF “RESTORING THE CAPACITY OF OUR LAND OR FARM TO FEED US”
Second, THIS MEANS TOTAL ABANDONMENT OF CHEMICALS – be they fertilizers and pesticides, flower inducers, weeds killers, etc. These chemicals are killing us softly and now speedily. Commercial fertilizers, for example, produce a deadly by-product called nitrosamines which is the most dreaded cause of cancers today. Increasing findings show that the breasts, milk and wombs of our women contain nitrosamines, pesticides which give us at least a hint as to the cause of the increasing cases of breast cancer, cervix cancer among our women and cancers among our small children!
Third, THIS MEANS TOTAL RETURN TO NATURAL, ORGANIC METHODS – a restoration of ecology, the whole integrated system of co-operation of plants, animals, man and nature in producing food!
Fourth, SPEND MUCH OF YOUR CITY-INCOME OR SALARIES TO
1) RESTORE THE NATURAL FERTILITY OF YOUR LAND’S SOIL. This is not so expensive if you focus on (1) farm ‘paril’ to prevent further soil erosion; (2) import soil from the valleys to which your former soil have gone or been washed away; re-fill your eroded farm; (3) lots of compost pits most preferably on the uppermost portion of your land to let fertile juice from the compost pits flow into the lower portions of your land; you may also place compost pits in different locations inside your farm. 1-2-meter deep will do. As to the width and length, you determine it to hold as many materials for composting as possible. The bigger the better; (4) if you don’t like pits, then, you can directly bury the weeds in the soil; but, this may be too laborious and therefore, expensive, howbeit equally or even more effective; (5) VERY IMPORTANT: Except on purpose to ‘smoke’ your fruit trees to induce fruiting or assist fruiting, NEVER BURN LEAVES OR WEEDS – make them your main material for compost natural fertilizer; (6) if you can finance the raising of poultry or livestock such as cows and goats, do so, not just for the meat or income you can derive but also for their dung to help make organic fertilizers.
2) PREPARE YOUR LAND, e.g., plant fertility-restoring trees or plants such as madre cacao, ipil-ipil from which you can get very ‘nutritious’ leaves to help make compost natural fertilizer; Napier grasses for your livestock; etc. Let your madre cacao or ipil-ipil also serve as your future fence for your goats or cows. The Napier grasses shall serve as feeds for your livestock.
3) SPEND MUCH OF YOUR PRESENT INCOME IN ENSURING A LONG-TERM PRODUCTIVITY OF YOUR LAND-FARM. The best suggestion is: Orchard or fruit trees farm, say, mango farm to be sooner or later integrated with livestock (e.g., VISION: ONE COW PER MANGO TREE), honeybee culture, poultry, etc. Another good suggestion is for barren portions to be planted with lumber trees – for your housing needs, for income, for production of fresh oxygen and many other benefits of a wooded place. Yes, you have to budget for a caretaker. If you still have farming parents, then, you are fortunate. They can provide the necessary labor or supervision to ensure that your orchard is take care of regularly, such as regular clean-up and fertilizing. A lot of compost pits is also recommended to hold the fertile weeds and leaves. You will spend only once for the digging of pits.
Basing on the experience of the Cebuanos, you can have a yearly income of P5,625.00 from 15 mango trees in th3 6th to 7th year after planting. At the 15th year, you will have P17,000.00 a year. At 20th year, you will have P39,469.00 a year. At 30th, you will have P158,339.70 – a year. At 40th year, P253,090.95!
You will start being able to survive from your orchard at year 20 which will yield you some P3,289.00 a month. If you planted the mangoes in your 30th birthday, then, you will experience this P3,289.00 a month income when you will be 50 years old. That is bigger than most pensions!
If you supplement it with vegetables, rice or corn, cows and goats and chicken, then, you will surely survive in the rural.
I am now 39 years old and my more than 15 mangoes are on their 12th year. They will be 20 years old when I will be 47 years old! Our five children will be 19, 17, 15, 13, and 10 at that time.
If I will send them to college, one will be finished at that time. The second will be still in college. The other two will be in high school. The youngest will be in the elementary.
Our UP-lecturer told us he is in his late 50s and still suffer to support his children in college. A wiser plan is to LET OUR CHILDREN GET OR ACQUIRE AN EDUCATION OR SKILL AT LEAST EQUIVALENT TO COLLEGE OR EVEN MORE THAN IT BY TURNING THEM INTO ENTREPRENEURS OF THEIR OWN TALENTS AND SKILLS and so send them to formal school up to high school only.
Result: Enjoying ‘retirement from big education expenses’ is possible for us, their parents, at the same time, our children will have speeded up to become earners far ahead their contemporaries. Also, together, parents and children can work for their orchard and for their talents and businesses, as well as personal and spiritual growth!
If college education be a necessity to become a qualified engineer, for example, then, the effective team-work “the older will support his/her next younger only” can help easen up parents’ load and at the same time, increase the bond of the children because they help one another. I know a couple, who have 10 children, had done this. Their children are now professionals using the formula. It came out that as far as educating is concerned, the parents were as if only having one child! For they only educated their eldest. The rest were educated or supported by their older brother or sister!
So, number of children is not a question if you are wise. Added to that: if you have made LOVE as the main basis of your marriage and family.
So early retirement is feasible. This ‘retirement’ means the withdrawal from city-based works especially if such work is not your talent, shift to agriculture and the pursuit of your talents and above spiritual development. “Retirement” does not mean inactivity; rather, it is heightened activity but one which is suited to what you love doing; it is work still but finally with joy and love!
This early retirement will mean a combination of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY (talent development, utilization and its entrepreneurization). If you opt to stay ‘incomeless’ aside from your mangoes’ income, and just concentrate on your hobbies, and spiritual studies for example, well, it will be up to you.
Much better if you have your talents made ‘cashable’ already. In my case, I am a fledgling book author – not that I have a lack of ideas or topics to write but more so on lack of capital to publish my books. My wife has a better-income-generating skill of cake baking. She is presently manning our small family bakery.
This whole integrated AGRO-INDUSTRIAL formula I am sharing to you is my own experience. Not to say that I have already at the tip of success, no I’m still on the way to success. But you need not dismiss this my humble suggestion (formula) merely because I have not reached the end, because I have not depended on my own exclusive experience – I AM MERELY FOLLOWING THE PATH THAT OTHERS, ALBEIT ONLY A FEW HAVE ALREADY TAKEN AND PROVEN!
The only risk or change that we will need to look at to is: WILL WE BE ABLE TO HAVE THE SAME HARVEST IF WE WILL NOT USE THEIR RECOMMENDED CHEMICALS, that is, if we will solely depend on organic methods? My answer: those who have used 100% organic system in rice (e.g., SRI system) have harvested two to three times greater (240 to 360 sacks a hectare) than what commercial fertilizers could achieve (only 120 sacks a hectare).
You will experience the big break at the 30th year of your mangoes, when your mangoes will give you a whopping P158,339.70 – a year! For that is P 13,194.98 a month! When your mangoes reach jubilee (50th birthday), P 369,164.70 will be the annual income, or a monthly income of P30,763.73. That’s an executive’s salary! A rich man’s income already!
At 60th, the half a million peso mark is passed!
Yes, by only 15 mango trees!
These estimates constituted 70% of all fruits, where 30% are considered not for the market.
Take note that these 15 mango trees should be planted on a half an hectare lot. For the ideal number of mango trees in a hectare is 30. Take note also that the buying price is put initially at P0.75 per fruit on ‘corridas’ basis with a successive 10% yearly rise.
[2] DISABLED LAND
No matter how much they will force us and say “There is only barren mind, not barren land”, reality still discourages.
I had started trying to live in the countryside since 1996 with my family. And I say that my mind is far from being barren. I have the most cultivated and intelligent mind you can find, not to brag. I graduated as valedictorian both elementary and high school and with high honors in my computer course, and worked as corporate planner and strategist in a big corporation which sent me to Manila to undergo special courses and trainings a number of times, plus countless of ‘state-side’ business books and magazines which I bought for the company, read and studied for 4 years, acquiring the knowledge more than any university can offer, and added to that: another 13 years of business and community development.
My present condition: WE GOT 95% OF OUR INCOME FROM OUR MENTAL-BUSINESS KNOWHOW, not yet from agriculture, e.g., orchard. The orchard shall rise like a morning star as soon as we reach our life’s sunset.
Our land has been admittedly made DISABLED by CHEMICALS, that is, fertilizers, pesticides, flower inducers, etc. Its present inability to sustain is in reality making us discourage to go back to farming or to depend on it for our survival.
For the ancient natural fertility of our soil has been destroyed by the chemicals as well as the continuing soil erosion due to the destruction of forest and flooding.
I insist that my mind is not barren; but it is miseducated in so far as I am not educated to do agriculture. My mind is misfit in this agriculture place. I am ignorant agriculture knowledge. So, this mind of agricultural ignorance must be turned into a mind that possesses sufficient knowledge in agriculture in order to be able to make the land productive and profitable, if not immediately but surely in the long run – in just the right time before we pass this world away!
The rest of the blessings of our planning and efforts will be for our children, when we will no longer be around!
So, their proverb must be interpreted as: “REFORMAT YOUR MISFITTEDLY WELL-EDUCATED MIND OR ADD TO IT BASIC WORKABLE KNOWLEDGE IN AGRICULTURE SO THAT YOU CAN TURN YOUR NOW BARREN LAND INTO AN OASIS OF LOVE AND LIFE AS WELL AS A WELLSPRING OF PEACE, JOY AND FREEDOM IN GREAT ABUNDANCE.”
BACK UP THE INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS
If you are an OFW or a businessman, it is of great urgency that you will give deeper thought and consideration to what I have been writing here. It is time to think about it while you still have the money to help you finance the transformation of your barren land into the oasis and wellspring that you dreamed of. A kind of paradise.
Do not continue wasting your money in materialistic spending which you will regret later, and can do nothing anymore to recover those lost money. These materialistic spending refers to those which will not give you real long-term benefits. Many of those you eat or allow your family to eat will not only have no long-term benefits but will also give you future headaches when they will cause you cancers, cardio-vascular diseases, diabetes, etc. Think of it.
Education of your children is a good investment. But be sure where will that education bring your children. Will it become education that enslaves or that will confine your children to mere employeeship – which is usually the modern equivalent to slavery?
Remember that our present kind and quality of education is not equivalent to decent and quality works abroad, but only is considered good for domestic helping, care giving, and miserably, prostitution! Yes, our teachers and other professionals are made prostitutes or maid-slaves abroad!
What kind of educational system is this? – which ‘turned’ our professionals or degree holder into slaves, maids, and prostitutes?
Where is the respect a college diploma is said to deserve?
Where are the decent jobs equivalent to our college courses?
A SPEEDY RESTORATION OF OUR FARM AND VILLAGES IS IN ORDER!
This calls the ACTION AND ALLOCATION OF OUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNITS (LGUs). Funds must also be sourced from the national government in order to hasten the agricultural restoration in our villages. Both the National Government and the LGUs must slow down its addiction to concrete-infrastructural projects and make a poll vault in the agricultural arena.
New farms must be created or old ones improved by carving out of the mountain slopes and tops terraces to prevent further erosion and to give way for soil refilling and fattening.
LGU and NG support for the long-term and lasting refertilization of the soil, land preparation, orchard planting, livestock raising, honeybee culture, etc. shall be maximized!
Guidance and support from expert NGOs and foundations are also needed. Also from the churches and schools and media.
Every institution must be involved. Every one.
Godspeed Every one!
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[1] Mango planters in Cebu, as their experience were recorded in the publication “Cebu Tecnoguide – Mango, by Central Visayas Technology Packaging Project, 1991
[2] Source brochure: Cebu Tecnoguide – Mango, by Central Visayas Technology Packaging Project, 1991
