Hi Gemma what a stark contract I remembered a Filipino farmer was honored in Norway for his discovery of high-yielding and pest resistant rice during the first year celebration of the Svalvard Global Seed Vault on Thursday, February 26, 2009. It was mentioned that “He was a farmer who, despite having only four years of formal education, discovered a rice variety that proved to be high-yielding and pest resistant, the sample of which is among the thousands of seeds kept at the global seed vault." The Philippines through the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is the highest donor to the global seed vault. It reportedly contributed 70,000 different varieties of rice from 120 different countries. This was a bit of disquieting news.
Posted By Gemma
In the inner pages of a local daily, a story had this headline "Farmers blighted by El Niño will be employed in construction projects." I could not help but gasp at what looked like a rather insensitive and haphazard solution to a predictable problem.
Will we ever learn how to plan and how to implement plans?
Many years ago, an official of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) told me that construction companies usually hire workers from out of town ( bankrupt farmers?) with no sustainable plans of where to house them and their families. Furthermore, when a construction project is over, little or no effort is exerted to send them back to their original provinces and they are left to their own devices here in the city. The farmers cum workers look for other construction sites and eventually join the swelling population of illegal urban dwellers.
Can't we give a predictable agricultural problem a long-term solution related to that benighted sector? Obliterating the agricultural sector by turning farmers to construction workers and fertile lands to subdivisions does not seem like a solution that attacks the problem at its very roots.
According to that bit of disquieting news, the farmers benighted by El Niño will be recruited to work in projects like irrigation canals and farm-to-market roads, infrastructure related to agricultural concerns. I hope that includes water catchment basins and rain water collection which should be useful during spells of La Niña. We have to care for our farmers or we'll all starve to death. (gemma601@yahoo.com)
