Oct 5 Is “World Teacher’s Day” – This Teacher Is Saying The World Has To Learn The Universal Meaning & Significance Of Regenerative Agriculture

Today, Wednesday, 05 October 2022 (Manila), is “World Teacher’s Day” – and as a teacher, I know that we have not been teaching our farmers rich orpoor about natural and man-made disasters. With the Internet, there is absolutely no excuse!

(Images: top from istockphoto.com, bottom from istockphoto.com)

The upper image tells us that up to now, 53 years after scientists of the universities UCLA and Stanford accomplished the first long-distance networking of computers in 1969 (Jonathan Hodgeback,  britannica.com), the actual beginning of the Internet, the world looks at teaching in a mechanical way, not connecting things one to the other, like a field suddenly burning.

The Internet came to the Philippines in 1994 (wikipedia.org), and the Hilarios got connected sometime in 1997. Considering what I have learned since attending college for my BS Agriculture major in Ag Edu at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA, now UP Los Baños), graduating in 1965 and continuing my self-study in agriculture and related fields, especially via the Internet:

I have come to the conclusion that Agriculture is the one major field where we can Defeat Farmer Poverty and with us undergoing Primate Change can simultaneously largely help defeat Climate Change!

I have equated my self-imposed work of what I call “Communication for Village Development in the 21st Century (CoViD21)” with the single act of reinventing the rotavator so that in 1 running, it accomplishes a 3-in-1 task:
(1) cultivates the soil,
(2) cuts & mixes soil & plant materials together, and
(3) certainly & consistently distributes the mix all over the field as it happily goes along!

My rotavation innovation will enrich the farmer because s/he does not need to buy any fertilizer it all – s/he creates it on the field automatically – which means zero fertilizer cost in farming, which means the would-be cost goes to the farmer’s pocket. (There is only 1 problem: The innovation needs financing to be realized.)

The rotavation innovation is my single contribution to the worldwide concept of Regenerative Agriculture that Robert Rodale started in 1989 as “Regenerative Organic Agriculture” (rodaleinstitute.org). (Please note that “organic fertilization” is only 1 way towards Regenerative Agriculture.)

With all the above in mind, here now is my considered definition:

Regenerative Agriculture is any principle, process, procedure, or practice applied by man that repeatedly returns, revives, resuscitates, or reinforces the natural ability of the old or newly cultivated field to grow plants and animals as dictated by the laws of Old Mother Nature.

As I see it, Regenerative Agriculture must not simply renew the soil but also the whole field far and wide with growing plants and animals peacefully carrying out their natural relationships.

We can then expect the following outputs or products from our practice of RA:

(1)   Healthy soil

(2)   Healthy crops

(3)   Healthy animals

(4)   Healthy harvests

(5)   Healthy foods

(6)   Healthy farmer incomes

(7)   Healthy villages.

How did they say it again? Regenerative Agriculture shows that certainly, “Health is wealth!”@517