Why In PH Agriculture, Science Is Not Helping Journalism, & Journalism Is Not Helping Farming

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The title of Bruce Tolentino’s Facebook sharing above is, “NEDA Urges Intensified Agricultural R&D To Improve Food Security.” It looks innocent, but it is not.

The source of the news item is the document titled “Inter-Agency Task Force Technical Working Group For Anticipatory And Forward Planning” – you can see that the headline is actually saying that it is NEDA and NEDA alone that has seen the need for intensified aggie R&D! You are looking at the usual PH journalistic hyperbole to catch your attention as a reader.

Actually, it is not NEDA saying that – it is ANN (my acronym for Author Not Named) – as usual the PH journalist is reporting in exaggeration with an intent to shock:

NEDA urges… intensified aggie R&D… food security.

The news is implying that it is NEDA alone that sees the urgency of the matter. This is an example of PH journalism –

Story going for the slant of surprise.

Sorry, but it is wrong. Even if you intensify aggie R&D, you cannot achieve food security – you can only achieve food sufficiency, which is an entirely different thing.

PH journalism must learn 2 things:

One: Do not sacrifice accuracy for shock.
Two: Know the correct meaning of the term you use.

Food sufficiency is physical; food security is political (policy). Under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar, the Philippines is going after food security, while aggie R&D is going after food sufficiency.

For both problems of lack of food security and of food insufficiency, I science writer blame them on budget constraints.

Being an alumnus of the UP College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños, and being off-and-on science writer in the last 45 years, and incessant blogger in the last 13 years, I know personally that, for instance, the College of Agriculture & Food Science, CAFS, of UPLB had been conducting as much R&D in postharvest handling of fruits and vegetables since 1977, as its budget allowed. For CAFS, I have just translated from English to Ilocano a brochure on hot water treatment of tomatoes to preserve freshness while awaiting processing or sale. That is to say, it is the lack of funding that is the problem, not the lack of science or planning for R&D.

So, when the news came out that a farmer somewhere in the mountains of Luzon dumped so many tons of tomatoes along the road, it showed that the science of postharvest storage of “extra” tomatoes has not reached the countryside. It’s the lack of budget, not the lack of science.

That is because UP Los Baños has not been diligent in transforming technical literature into popular language reading materials. It’s the budget. We recover as one, but one of us needs higher budget!

Why cannot the Philippines take care of its sciences so that the new or improved sets of knowledge, technologies and systems can be translated from technical jargon into the language that the people in the countryside can apply?

Ask UP Los Baños: PH aggie science awaits higher PH budget!@517


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