(“Aerial Alabat” from facebook.com)
3 lessons from Doc Ciel:
Agribusiness – farming is a business; if you don’t appreciate that, you’re
a farmer loser.
Diversification – My God, most of Filipino farmers are monocroppers!
Linkage to value chains – “Global value chains connect producers to
consumers across the world,” says OECD (oecd.org).
These value chains help deliver supplies of food and fiber – and in return, reward
the farmers much.
Doc Ciel says:
Agribusiness
initiatives and deliberate initiatives to widen sources of livelihood for the
farm populace indeed appear to have set Alabat apart from adjoining Perez and
Quezon towns, which have thrice and twice as much poverty, respectively.
Calamansi alone seems to have made a major difference. … In years past, natural
calamities and diseases had nearly decimated the crop, with only Alabat town
managing to keep a prominent chunk of the industry. Its break came when local
calamansi farmers secured a contract to supply Jollibee with the product.
The widened sources of
livelihood have set Alabat apart from next towns Perez and Quezon, which “thrice
and twice as much poverty, respectively.” One source of this man-made
(economic) phenomenon is the calamansi – via farmers enjoying a contract to
supply the fruit to Jollibee, the #1
food chain in the Philippines.
Calamansi or onion or any other crop – if farmers
connect to a value chain, they can become millionaires!
Doc Ciel credits Alabat’s
enriching farmers also to the town’s leadership:
We witnessed first
hand Mayor [Fernando] Mesa’s sharp
and active mind in action, always thinking well beyond the current state of
things, and seemingly seeing opportunities for his townspeople at every turn.
“Challenge the status quo” is one of his mantras, and doing so has served his
town well.
“Challenge the status quo” I almost always
do, but not negatively –unlike those street protesters who endlessly shout,
“Down with..!”
It was in fact through
his proactive push that many of the alternative economic activities in his town
have progressed. But his deep spirituality and Christian faith could very well
spell the greatest difference for his leadership. Mentored by the Fellowship of
Christians in Government (FOCIG) since his army days, he has changed
traditional mindsets in his own bureaucracy by offering FOCIG’s leadership
enrichment seminars to his municipal officers, and soon, the town’s teachers
and youth groups as well.
If you are a leader, please do not separate
your spirituality with your work. I am a Roman Catholic and a writer; I do not
separate my “old Catholicism” with “modern” ideas of agriculture. After all, Father
Adam came from the earth!@517
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