What Keeps PH Farmers Poor? Here Are 11 Of Their Bad Habits!

Here’s Frank A Hilario’s List Of 11 Farmer Bad Habits:

Whats 1.   Borrowing from usurers.

During the rice planting season, farmers borrow cash from usurers, with a 5-6 arrangement, borrow 5 and pay back 6, in 3-4 months time. Easy cash, so farmers resort to “friendly” lenders. They borrow thousands of pesos to buy seeds and/or chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

Whats 2.   Unnecessary labor in soil preparation

The primary reason for puddling the soil is to defeat the weeds. There is a much better, more intelligent way to defeat the weeds – and why do you destroy the soil structure by plowing and puddling?

Instead, the field can be cultivated by a rotavator so that the weeds and soil are cut to fine pieces and mixed together in the same single rotating motion. Since this is repeated all over the field, the result is an organic mulch that will add its richness to the next crop.

Whats 3.   Transplanting old seedlings.

PH farmers are used to transplanting 1-month old seedlings, which are 2 weeks too old! 2-week old seedlings are easier to transplant and easily recover from the transplanting shock.

Whats 4.   Too many seedlings per hill.

PH farmers transplant 2 or more seedlings per hill, which then compete against each other for nutrients. Not only that. In a crowded hill, there is hardly any tiller grown by each seedling transplanted. It is the tillers that bear the rice panicles – but very few tillers will grow in a crowded place.

Whats 5.   Farmers practice calendared spraying.

Even when there is no sign of any infestation (pest) or infection (disease), farmers spray their insecticide or antifungal chemical as recommended by their sources, mostly technicians or sellers. Waste of time, waste of money.

Whats 6.   Wasted rice grains during threshing.

Some rice farmers insist on using the thresher, not the combine harvester. There is unnecessary waste in threshing and hardly any in using the combine harvester.

Whats 7.   Wasted grains in drying.

Farmers dry their palay on roads and are careless or lazy in gathering all the grains they spread on the concrete.

Whats 8.   Farmers sell to traders.

The bulk buyers offer the lowest price during harvest time, and the farmer cannot refuse because of his debts – the buyer is the usurer.

Whats 9.   Farmer leaders don’t fight for farmers.

The farmer associations do not usually fight in favor of the farmers – their leaders have their own agendas.  

Whats 10.    Farmers splurge after selling harvests.

One of the baddest habits of farmers – they spend thousands overnight, calling on their friends and family to a feast. With the drinks comes so much on food, pulutan. Feeling rich today, being poor tomorrow.

Whats 11.    Farmers blame lack of land ownership for their poverty.

Farmer leaders, usually the activist kind, keep repeating in farmers’ ears that the government must grant land ownership to the poor farmers, or they will never exert more efforts for them to rise from poverty. Very convenient excuse.

Now, read all of the above 10 reasons!@517