Postharvest – To Make 5Ps For The New PH DA Under Secretary Of Agriculture William Dar!

 

Certainly, the Plant, Plant, Plant Program, 4Ps, of the PH DA under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar is more than important: it is indispensable.

We forgot another P.

Now, when you plant, plant, plant – you produce. And we all forgot what happens, or should happen, when we produce. There is a missing P!

Postharvest.

I am an alumnus of UP Los Baños; I was working as Chief Information Officer of the Forest Research Institute when the Postharvest Horticulture Training & Research Center, PHTRC, was set up in 1977 via the ASEAN-Australian Economic Cooperation Program. (Who was PH President when the PHTRC was established? My favorite Bad-Boy-Best President, FM.)

Even I, an alumnus of UPCA, now UPLB, have forgotten this 43-year old very important part, VIP, of my University – we forget what is not always intruding into our sight, VIP or not.

The PHTRC is a unit of the College of Agriculture & Food Science, CAFS, of UP Los Baños. Note that the old CA has become CAFS – it has to be. You cannot practice agriculture without producing food! And you have to handle food right, right?

Postharvest has something to do with the “oversupply” of farm produce coming from anywhere in the Philippines. One example: On 10 January 2019, farmers in the Cordillera Administrative Region “were forced to dispose of their vegetables due to oversupply and lack of means to transport the harvest to market[1],” as reported by Reicelene Joy N Ignacio (“DA To Compensate Cordillera Farmers For Dumped Crops,” BusinessWorld Online). Certainly not an isolated case. That happened 18 months ago, and even I have hardly thought about how to prevent that from happening again.

I should have been the last person to forget postharvest. My daughter Daphne Cassandra works as a Research Associate at the PHTRC of UPLB. She has gone many places in the Philippines for the sake of improving postharvest produce of PH vegetables and fruits. I edited the English language text at late 2019 of the Center’s “Primer On Postharvest Handling Of Perishable Crops,” 93 pages, authored by OK Bautista, AL Acedo Jr & AC Castro (above is the cover photo of that brochure). Sometimes we forget what is right in front of our noses.

So now I am recommending that our Secretary of Agriculture, who has a PhD in Horticulture from UP Los Baños, 1987, include a DA budget for current postharvest handling of farm produce – as well as in the next year’s budget. How about P3 billion for new PHTRC buildings and facilities at UP Los Baños, additional courses and staff, and an information center dedicated to postharvest handling, including digital trainings and exchanges?

The harvests we save are our own!

We must make good use of produce before they become oversupplies – how about processing vegetables and fruits for the export markets?

Whether the farm produce are for PH consumers or any exports, until they have contributed their hidden wealths to human bodies, may our fresh perishable products not perish from the Earth!@517

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[1]https://www.bworldonline.com/da-to-compensate-cordillera-farmers-for-dumped-crops/

aFactbook – Forward To A New PH Agriculture Of Prosperity!

As an Ilocano aboriginal original, I Frank A Hilario have a new radical proposal: For Philippine agriculture heads in administration and academe to cause to be created a Facebook world-alike called aFactbook.

With aFactbook, we Filipinos will enjoy a double-featured Facebook!

The 2 faces above are those of PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar and the recipient of my unsolicited advice to the Board of Trustees of the UP System (see my essay, “Who Will Be The Chancellor Of The Brave New World Of UPLB?^[1]” 08 August 2020, BraveNewWorld.PH):

Patrick Alain T Azanza
UP Los Baños Chancellor 2020

I know Dar has been digital-minded in at least the last 17 years; I just learned Azanza has been immersed in the digital universe for years – and those heads we need today in moving PH Agriculture:

Forward to a new Philippine Prosperity!

Yes! Gentlemen and ladies, as we Filipinos are the most ubiquitous denizens of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Dedicated to the PH New Normal, we Filipinos need a parallel universe – aFactbook – for all the Arts & Sciences, to help develop these islands into a new, archipelagic Garden of Eden. The coronavirus pandemic should not lock us down to being only bystanders!

If you ask me, Agriculture is the Very First Art of the World, starting at the Garden of Eden. The Genesis story is that Adam and Eve failed as gardeners, and so they drove themselves out of the Garden.

I hope Mankind is not going to fail again taking care of the New Garden of Eden.

aFactbook – imagineered between the DA and UPLB.

I see the non-confines of a collective universe that is unlimited in being:

informative,
insistent,
insightful,
inspiring,
intellectual,
interesting,
provocative
– but above all polite.

Not unlike Zuckerberg’s universally beloved Facebook, but dedicated to The New Garden of Eden: The Philippine Islands.

aFactbook. in this new digital universe, we will fill in the facts, facets, features, stories, surmises, theories, conclusions, whatever surrounding and within these islands of the Philippines directly and indirectly related to agriculture.

aFactbook is a parallel universe where, as in Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, we Filipinos can discuss anything under the sun.

aFactbook. For all Internet denizens, this is a universe we want! And we can create it at will.

As a UPLB alumnus, my new challenge to Azanza is related to Dar’s 17-year old challenge he called Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture, OpAPA, which he submitted to PH Agriculture via PhilRice when he was still Director General of ICRISAT. With aFactbook aborning, I wish to be among the creators of that new digital universe – after all, as PhilRice consultant I wrote what I proposed was a theoretical-practical operations digital book for OpAPA 17 years ago yet: The Geography Of Knowledge. (Interested? available as ecopy, 198 pages: frankahilario@gmail.com).

aFactbook should be easy to access via something even the farmers are now familiar with, the cellphone, which will then go revolutionize PH Agriculture.

With aFactbook, we Filipinos will be cultivating our own geniuses! Isn’t that genius?@517

 

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[1]https://bravenewworldph.blogspot.com/2020/08/who-will-be-chancellor-of-brave-new.html

Who Will Be The Chancellor Of The Brave New World Of UPLB?

As an alumnus of UP Los Baños, 1965, I remember all Chancellors did love the academe much more than they did the farmers – there were no full-scale farmer-directed programs or projects based on new or improved science coming from the University. Today, I hope the story will be bravely different.

The 3 candidates for the UPLB chancellorship this year are:

Patrick Alain T Azanza  
Jose V Camacho Jr 
Fernando C Sanchez Jr

“Three Vie For UPLB Chancellorship” says the uplb.edu.ph news headline. They presented their Vision, Plans and Programs 05 August 2020 at 9 AM via Zoom; the proceedings can be viewed at the UPLB ITC Facebook page[1].

When I look at their individual submissions of Vision, Plans & Programs downloadable from the uplb.edu.ph website, I am disappointed with the two and encouraged by the one.

As a UPLB alumnus who has been in and out of the campus in the last 10 years, I hardly know them. Since I am nosy for news as creative writer and a digital man, if self-taught, I hope that any of those candidates is digital-savvy, the kind of Chancellor I believe is the need of the times.

Sanchez has a PhD in Landscape Architecture obtained from the Tokyo University of Agriculture. Strictly speaking, that’s Horticulture, not Agriculture.

Camacho is an Economics professor and has been Dean of the UPLB Graduate School since 2012. His vision is to “future-proof” UPLB, whatever that means, and to maintain its relevance by “developing methods, approaches, and framework to minimize the cost and impacts of shocks of future events.” He is talking about the coronavirus lockdown but not beyond.

Azanza has a PhD in Educational Administration from UP Diliman. His Vision is to “harness the University’s potentials” in development communication, eLearning, information science, and technology. 

Azanza's my brave man!

I like what he says about agriculture and education:

As we inevitably welcome the Internet of Things (IoT) and other technology advancements, UPLB has that distinct role in defining the academic boundaries and depths by which such technologies and scientific applications shall fit into the University’s curricular offerings in order to develop knowledge and skills that can be put to meaningful use in the industries,

Nonetheless. Azanza is thinking the thoughts of the industries, not the thoughts of farmers in the countryside! Yet, this is where it can all begin.

The audience during the presentations by the nominees comprised the different sectors of the University: students, alumni, and faculty, “to hopefully gain their support.” I say why did they not invite farmers from Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao “to hopefully gain their support”?

It seems that the once University of the Philippines’ College of Agriculture had forgotten that it began with the American tutors as a Cow College – there are no carabaos as beasts of burden in the United States – in the end, it is the duty of UP Los Baños to serve the digital needs of the farmers, minus carabaos, especially now that they are ready with their cellphones!@517

 

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[1]https://www.facebook.com/itc.uplb/live/

Time For Any New UPLB Chancellor To Ally With Secretary Of Agriculture William Dar!

As an alumnus of UP Los Baños, 1965, I remember all Chancellors did love the academe much more than they did the farmers – there were no full-scale farmer-directed programs or projects based on new or improved science coming from the University. Today, I hope the story will be entirely different.

The 3 candidates for the UPLB chancellorship this year are:

Patrick Alain T Azanza  
Jose V Camacho Jr
Fernando C Sanchez Jr

“Three Vie For UPLB Chancellorship” says the uplb.edu.ph news headline. They presented their Vision, Plans and Programs 05 August 2020 at 9 AM via Zoom; the proceedings can be viewed at the UPLB ITC Facebook page[1].

When I look at their individual submissions of Vision, Plans & Programs downloadable from the uplb.edu.ph website, I am disappointed with the two and encouraged by the one.

As a UPLB alumnus who has been in and out of the campus in the last 10 years, I hardly know them. Since I am nosy for news as creative writer and a digital man, if self-taught, I hope that any of those candidates is digital-savvy, the kind of Chancellor I believe is the need of the times.

Sanchez has a PhD in Landscape Architecture obtained from the Tokyo University of Agriculture. Strictly speaking, that’s Horticulture, not Agriculture.

Camacho is an Economics professor and has been Dean of the UPLB Graduate School since 2012. His vision is to “future-proof” UPLB, whatever that means, and to maintain its relevance by “developing methods, approaches, and framework to minimize the cost and impacts of shocks of future events.” He is talking about the coronavirus lockdown but not beyond.

Azanza has a PhD in Educational Administration from UP Diliman. His Vision is to “harness the University’s potentials” in development communication, eLearning, information science, and technology. That’s my man!

I like what he says about agriculture and education:

As we inevitably welcome the Internet of Things (IoT) and other technology advancements, UPLB has that distinct role in defining the academic boundaries and depths by which such technologies and scientific applications shall fit into the University’s curricular offerings in order to develop knowledge and skills that can be put to meaningful use in the industries,

Nonetheless. Azanza is thinking the thoughts of the industries, not the thoughts of the farmers in the countryside! Yet, this is where it can all begin.

The audience during the presentations by the nominees comprised the different sectors of the University: students, alumni, and faculty, “to hopefully gain their support.” I say why did they not invite farmers from Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao “to hopefully gain their support”?

It seems that the once University of the Philippines’ College of Agriculture had forgotten that it began with the American tutors as a Cow College – there are no carabaos as beasts of burden in the United States – in the end, it is the duty of UP Los Baños to serve the digital needs of the farmers, minus carabaos, especially now that they are ready with their cellphones!@517

 

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[1]https://www.facebook.com/itc.uplb/live/

A Brave New World PH

Wake up, Philippines!

British author Aldous Huxley wrote the novel Brave New World in 1931, “Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy” (Wikipedia[1]) – as opposed to the ideal utopian, there is a dystopian society with its “huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning.” Sounds familiar?

As if Huxley’s BNW is not enough, we have another British author, George Orwell, writing in 1949 his final book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which “examines the role of truth and facts within politics and their manipulation[2].” Sounds familiar!

No matter how early or how late in your world right now, as I begin to write this at about 2008 hours 08 08 2020, Manila time, with this essay, I am announcing my creation of this brand new blog, Brave New World PH.

The Beast is here.
The Best is yet to come!

I am looking for a non-masculine Brave New World, BNW. More like a feminine BNW, not excitingly sexy but exciting! (BNW image from comicbook TV[3], image I extended down a little bit)

The other image: And why did I superimpose a map of the Philippines? (from Wikipedia[4]). I want to point out that all of us Filipinos now have a duty to discover a brand new world called The BNW Philippines! You don’t see it now, but we will.

With BNW PH, I want to emphasize to all Filipinos that we in fact entered a brand new world beginning when President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, Du30, a Mindanao-happy political leader, declared a partial lockdown in the whole country – legally only Metro Manila – starting midnight of Sunday, 15 March 2020. I don’t want to contest the why or how; I just want to get over it! With my proposal for a Brave New World PH!

All such thoughts had been triggered by an actual advertisement by a PH government agency extolling a highly successful farmer who once was an OFW. I consider that double jeopardy. One, government does not pay for Filipinos to applaud other Filipinos, especially a single success story, SSS. This is something old and something new: PH’s 1-year old Secretary of Agriculture William Dar has declared a clustering approach to PH Agriculture – see my essay, “The New 7 Arts Of War – Against PH Farmer Poverty, Via Clustering[5]” (05 August 2020, THiNK Journalism, Digital).

Which is why as a college grade in agriculture and a self-taught science writer, my view of the Brave New World PH is naturally anchored on agriculture. And certainly, based on:

“The New Thinking for Agriculture” and
The 8 Paradigms
(c/o William Dar, PH Secretary of Agriculture)

We must apply that whole package to create a brave new world for us. We have to fight bravely for beyondsurvival lockdown and for a Brave New Thinking-Agriculture Philippines!

That victory must be in a Brave New World starting now!

The Brand New Philippines is
for us not to Discover but
for us to Create.
First in our Minds.@517

 

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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
[3]https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/brave-new-world-tv-show-spoilers-review-peacock/
[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines
[5]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-new-7-arts-of-war-against-ph-farmer.html

William Dar – PH Man Cultivating Our Cultivators. More, Cultivating Our Minds!

PH Agriculture today, Wednesday, 05 August 2020, the 122-year old Department of Agriculture, DA, celebrates the 1-year old Secretary of Agriculture William Dar.

Above, below the left superimposed image, the headline says, “P2.6 Billion Released For Farmers, SMEs[1]” (Metro News Central). Released by Mr Dar, that is a small part of the huge amounts of DA assistances to the Filipino farmers.

The Filipino head is serving the Filipino farmers, not the least by seeking Du30’s support for the budgets, plural, to cultivate the cultivators of the soil.

And I celebrate as a cultivator of the mind.

It was Mr Dar who inspired me much to cultivate the minds of the Filipino aggie scientists to cultivate the minds of the Filipino farmersto become much more productive.

We first had a meeting of the minds literally in the digital world when at that time, 2003, he was stil Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, his proposal called Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture, OpAPA. That was the time 17 years ago I was a consultant at PhilRice, an agency under the DA. Inspired, with the idea of PhilRice as Webmaster, I wrote a digital book on how to implement OpAPA, 198 pages of it, that I titled The Geography Of Knowledge, TGoK. I submitted TGoK to PhilRice Director Leocadio F Sebastian, but nothing came out of it. PhilRice had no more use of me. (For ecopy, email me: frankahilario@gmail.com.)

Ah, but old soldiers never die – they just fade into the background. Today, that background has changed – it has become insistently digital. Above, the digital image (from Information Age[2]) is telling us:

What the mind discovers, the hands should apply!

The mind is where I have been working in and on and out of since I began to master my creative writing in 1965 when I was about to graduate from college. And the latest digital product that I have in mind right now fits into OpAPA:

a-Book Talk.

A book talks? It fills your eyes. It fills your mind.

It’s really Mr Dar’s OpAPA digital universe open to farmers via those freely downloadable a-Book Talks in handy sizes.

Any one of those a-Book Talks will be available instantly. Via your PC, you can download the entire book from OpAPA in complete pdf form, then print on your own. Or simply read. Each a complete publication in itself.

Here are hints to give you ideas about the contents of a single a-Book Talk:

Rice
Brief history, historical yields
Inbred rices, Hybrid rices
Varieties, strains – described, differentiated
Rices in regions – differentiating regions
Rainy season rices – expected yields
Dry season rices – expected yields

As Webmaster, I would see to it that the Language In is correct technically according to the experts – with the Language Out being popular, farmer’s.

Message in, Massage out!

Our farmers will be more intelligent deciding via books of options. Now is the time for all good men to come to the digital aid of their country!@517

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[1]http://metronewscentral.net/in-and-around-the-metro/p26-billion-released-for-farmers-smes
[2]https://www.information-age.com/6-ways-overcome-digital-disruption-paralysis-123461522/

The New 7 Arts Of War – Against PH Farmer Poverty, Via Clustering

I love the farm clustering idea as a roundup to William Dar’s 1^st Year as Secretary of Agriculture today, 05 August 2020. (cluster image from Clusters 2.0[1])

Beyond the simplistic logo of the Department of Agriculture, DA, these times we need multiplicity not only of food choices but also of ready resources!

All of PH Agriculture should be ready for all that clustering.

So now I will campaign for more Cluster Success Stories. After all, it’s the community that is all-important, not the single standouts.

Regarding the so many billions and millions of pesos being offered by the DA to the Filipino farmers to not only to survive but thrive during and especially after all these coronavirus lockdowns, the Filipino farmers as a whole must know now that they will be held hugely accountable.

Beggars cannot be choosers!

My advice:Practice The New 7 Arts (Rs) of War Against PH Farmer Poverty – via Strategic Clustering.

(1)   Responsibility.
Each region must be responsible for its own pandemic war preparations. They must have a master plan on how to spend those billions of pesos. 

(2)   Reorganization.
Filipino farmers are organized, disorganized, and non-organized. I recommend the multi-purpose cooperative with everything: loans, farm equipment, technologies, systems, postharvest processing facilities, warehousing, and marketing assistance. It is the members of the board of the coop who are responsible to the people, not simply a dictatorial Association President or a charlatan.

(3)   Remembrance.
Filipino farmers must not forget about the heirloom varieties that our forefathers had raised, especially in rice. These are valuable not only for the sake of history but for the sake of yield given the native productivity of the land. And they also remind us that left alone the Earth is rich by itself.

(4)   Rebuke.
Filipino farmers must now be rebuked in seeking usurious loans and actively assisted not only in obtaining affordable loans but also on how to spend them for what, when, and how. This is one of the main reasons I prefer a multi-purpose coop to any association or credit cooperative.

(5)   Revitalization.
We as a nation must help revitalize the spirit of the Filipino farmer from a lowly toiler of the soil because of lack of education or resources. Precisely! Via government, modern agriculture should provide the farmers the science as well as the financial assistances, plural, they need to raise honorable lives. Don’t forget to enlist the youth!

(6)   Research.
As a cluster themselves, researchers must actively contributute to the growth of Agriculture, not simply conduct R&D & publish papers! They must continue to come up with new and/or improved knowledge for extensionists to disseminate.

(7)   Retrenching hopes.
Finally, let me emphasize that farmers should abandon dreams of farming making their families richer while others remain poor, just like the single stories coming out of the media every now and then. These are not the Times for The Filipino Farmer Dreamer in Singularity – these are the Times for The Filipino Farmer Dreamers in Community!

Clustering:
All For One, One For All!@517

 

 

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[1]http://www.clusters20.eu/clusters-2-0-postcard/