PhilRice Machines – Which Of These Can Help Solve Farmer Poverty And Resolve Climate Change?

An Agriculturist, I am 82 plus; age matters as matters age, but it seems that PhilRice machines matter but do not age – they just disappear from public view. The above “album,” my photographs, taken with my Lumix FZ100 digital camera, shows farm machines invented by PhilRice in its headquarters in the Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija. The machines were at the impromptu exhibit of PhilRice Los Baños on 18 April 2018.

I took the photographs on the day itself of the “Lakbay Palay Dry Season 2018” showcase at PhilRice Los Baños, its headquarters next to the UP Los Baños campus, ANN says the event was attended by about 400 participants including farmers, extension workers, students, provincial and municipal agriculturists, experts and partners across CALABARZON (Author Not Named, “CALABARZON Rice Stakeholders Push For High Quality Seeds,” 24 April 2018, PhilRice, philrice.gov.ph).

That was 4 years ago. Today, I am writing about it with concern because I have not read anything about those PhilRice machines – they could not have vanished into thin air!

The last 2 items in the album image are closeups of the rotating cultivator or rotavator pulled by a Kubota 4-wheel tractor. About the rotavator, as I have blogged several times since 2000, I have discovered and proven in practice that:

The off-the-shelf rotavator can be used, with my strict instructions, to prepare a desired organic mulch all over the field even as it cultivates the soil. This is automatic organic farming!

That is my claim, so I am challenging all of PhilRice, including its stations, to prove or disprove it.

On 21 April 2014, I blogged, “Not My Achievers’ Night. It Rained On My Parade!” (A Magazine Called Love, amagazinecalledlove.blogspot.com):

Some 20 years after I ‘discovered’ [Edward H] Faulkner and began advocating his kind of organic farming, visiting our village Sanchez [Asingan, Pangasinan], I had this surprising little information from my [cousin-in-law Lorenzo Casasos (free translation from Ilocano):

Manong, you remember what you were teaching Papang (my father) about farming? I followed your instructions and now my neighbor farmers are wondering why they are getting much less from their rice while they follow everything I do, fertilizing and spraying as often and as much as I.

Now then, today I challenge PhilRice to conduct comparative techno demo cum research tillage in all its stations: PhilRice Batac, PhilRice Isabela, PhilRice headquarters (City of Muñoz), PhilRice Los Baños, PhilRice Bicol, PhilRice Negros, PhilRice Agusan, PhilRice Bukidnon, and PhilRice Midsayap. I will instruct the rotavator operators precisely as I instructed the Asingan Howard operator to produce that automatic organic mulch, the mixed material already laid all over the field with no further ado – mechanical cultivationsimultaneous with organic fertilization.

Thus, that intelligent cultivator is a hidden weapon against Climate Change. Unlike the prevalent chemical farming, organic farming does not generate greenhouse gases (GHGs) that generate Climate Change. And since the organic mulch is produced inexpensively, sooner or later, with zero GHGs from farms:

Simultaneously, Organic Farming solves Farmer Poverty and resolves Climate Change!@517