Sir Arsenio Balisacan, Advising Economist, We Need Your Wise Counsel Towards Regenerative Economics Enriching Farmers!

Thank you for your Inquirer column “Escaping The Middle Income Trap” (opinion.inquirer.net) where you say:

The goal is not simply to meet the income thresholds for upper-middle-income status but to achieve sustained, inclusive, and resilient development. This requires preserving sound economic fundamentals – prudent debt management, fiscal discipline, low inflation, and financial stability.

I note particularly “to achieve sustained, inclusive, and resilient development.” My exact hopes, in case you wanted to know, for Filipino farmers.

I’m thinking of my 2020 article “IRRI, PhilRice, The Rotavator & Lorenzo’s Secret” (THiNK Journalism, ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com), where I said:

“The New Thinking For Agriculture” espoused by Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie has yet to consider what the rotavator can do to enrich the farmers’ pockets by first enriching their soils!”

That is sharing my experience of more than half a century ago.

I have a 55-year direct experience with the Howard rotavator in my hometown Asingan in eastern Pangasinan. That 1965, I was instructing the driver of the big tractor not to set the blades to any depth but just drive through the field, and because the Howard rotavator was heavy, it cut into the soil anyway, about 2-3 inches, which is what I wanted. My brother-in-law Lorenzo Casasus was there at that time; in later years he copied the shallow cultivation with his Kuliglig hand tractor, ie, rototiller. The results? His neighbors could not match his yields even if they tried to copy all his methods – he did not tell them about the magic that his rototiller was doing.

I’m now 85 years old and what occupies my time today is blogging about agriculture and how our Filipino farmers can rise above poverty. Perhaps, with a little financing from a third party, Mr Balisacan, together we can demonstrate how the rotavator can help the farmer rise from poverty in 1-2 years – yes, in 12-24 months – because the rotavator technique I have personally devised requires no added expenses except in running it – and yet it will produce unbelievably high yields!

Yes, Sir – to see is to believe. How about you convincing IRRI, UPLB and/or PhilRice to provide the logistics for the techno demos – about PhP 517,000 for the rotavator purchase & management, cultivating the field, and for rice seeds to be planted. The ideal experimental field would be at PhilRice Los Baños Station, which lies next to IRRI and UPLB.

I’m now reading the AFP news “Less-Thirsty Rice Offers Hope In Drought-Stricken Chile” (Anon, 30 April, Malay Mail, malaymail.com). The story is that of Javier Muñoz who has a farm in Chile and is only rationing water to the rice crops, not irrigating them. The rice is the “Jaspe” strain created by experts at the Chile Agricultural Research Institute’s Rice Breeding Program.

Contrast Jaspe now with any of the water-hungry IRRI-bred rices – and you will see how IRRI rices will have to improve just as they are! Economically. No more rice breeding. With you, farmers will learn the undiscovered secret of the rotavator – with Frank A Hilario!@517