Is IRRI Taking Farmers For Granted?

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Yesterday, how did I say UP Los Baños has been treating the Filipino farmers up to now? At best, half-ignoring their knowledge needs (see my essay, “Why Is UP Los Baños Visibly Digital And Invisibly Developmental?[1]“15 June 2020, THiNK Journalism, Digital). Indeed:

For Filipino rice farmers, UPLB has been
developing technologies,
but not developing lives!

Differently, is the internationally renown IRRI, based at the campus of UP Los Baños, any better in dealing with rice farmers in the Philippines and all of Asia? Not that I know of, and I have been in and out of Los Baños, where it is based. Look at the above image again – the cover of the 27-page manual Steps To Successful Rice Production (IRRI Rice Knowledge Bank[2]). I ask: “What does successful mean?”

So! After 60 years of R&D, IRRI has come up with a 27-page distillation of much of what it has discovered about what are the steps to successful rice production.

Is that all the rice farmer needs to be successful?
No, of course not!

If you say, “Well, it covers only technology, and promises nothing more. In that sense, it is a good manual.”

I will say, “Yes Sir, or Madam, it is a good manual – if you don’t know much about the growing of rice. Because the manual is simplistic. The actual title is “12 Steps To Successful Rice Production” – which implies that if you simply follow those 12 steps, nothing more and nothing less, you will become a successful rice producer. I say, maybe, but:

Rice farming is not simply the growing of rice!

That is why the Filipino farmer needs the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture, OpAPA, which I mentioned yesterday. That is why in 2003 I produced the OpAPA “creation book” titled Geography Of Knowledge, all 198 pages of it.

Sorry, but the OpAPA was not implemented properly, digitally. More so today, the farmer needs to know the whole geography of knowledge of rice – from seed to spoon – and follow-up the value chain, from production to postharvest handling to marketing, locally as well as internationally. If the farmer knew by heart all those 12 IRRI steps, he will still remain poor – unless he learns to be business-minded from beginning to end, counting costs and returns.

Indeed, not guiding cultivators of the soil beyond rice production, UP Los Baños has been shortchanging the Filipino farmers, and IRRI has been shortchanging the Asian farmers!

What would have OpAPA given the Filipino rice farmers? In my book, 3 words:

Advice on Options.

You don’t tell the farmer what to do – you give him advice. You don’t tell him how to solve his problems – you give him Options. You point out to him Opportunities. You advice him on how to overcome Obstacles.

For IRRI, it will have to be something like an Open Language for Asian Farmers, OpLan Asia. All encompassing, all digital, all interactive, all business.

Who told you rice farming is that simple?!@517

 

[1]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/07/why-is-up-los-banos-visibly-digital-and.html

[2]http://knowledgebank.irri.org/images/docs/12-Steps-Required-for-Successful-Rice-Production.pdf


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