To Solve Their Poverty, Farmers Should Help Themselves, Yes. But We Have To Help Them First!

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Are our aggie scientists and their associates speaking the language of the farmers? I don’t mean my Ilocano or your Tagalog or his Bisaya; I mean – “Are we helping especially the poor farmers help themselves?”

(“Digital” from ruralbusinessschool.org.uk, “Empty pockets” from clker.com)

I am currently editing what I will refer to here as “Survival Science” on rice & sugar, a book that is major-authored by still-very-active although retired UP Los Baños professor Teodoro C Mendoza, and so I was intrigued when I saw on Facebook this one: “Pursuing Rice Agroecology: The APCO Model,” which I subsequently found is a case study authored by Raul Socrates, C Banzuela & Jimmy Geronimo of Pakisama (Pambansang Kilusan Ng Mga Samahang Magsasaka) with headquarters in Quezon City. (Source: FAO Agroecology Knowledge Hub, 2016, fao.org)

The 2nd paragraph of that paper says:

Understanding the negative economic, health, and environmental impacts of the Green Revolution to the rice farmers, civil society organizations, especially after the 1986 People Power Revolution, intensified work with scientists to evolve a more integrated, diversified, organic farming systems that would uplift rice farmers out of dependencies and poverty.

I note with much interest: “that would uplift rice farmers out of dependencies and poverty.” Those goals are very much appreciated by this agriculturist who is also a son of not-so-poor Ilocano farmer Dionisio from Asingan, Pangasinan.

“Out of dependencies and poverty” – Some farmers and friends organized the Agus Pinoy Producers Cooperative (APCO) starting with 15 members in 2012. Some 4 years later, APCO already had 200 farmer members/partners cultivating 500 ha of “diversified organic farms” in Agusan Del Sur, Mindanao. (“Agus” must mean “river” or literally “flow.”)

I love the sound of that phrase: “diversified organic farms” – 2 meanings. The APCO farmers (1) do not rely on a single crop such as rice or coconut but several crops, and (2) apply organic methods to the land they are cultivating, graduating as it were from the chemical agriculture that they inherited from their fathers (and supported by public and private agriculturists in the past – and up to the present).

Thinking from 2007, when Al Gore and the IPCC co-won the Nobel Peace Prize for their works on Climate Change, that 2016 document about the APCO is telling this agriculturist in 2023 that the Agusan farmers are actually now into fighting Climate Change whether they realize it or not. That’s music to my ears!

There is now PAKISAMA, a national confederation of family farmers organizations – in Tagalog, “pakisama" literally means “cooperation.” And so:

The Confederation trained member organizations to train their member farmers to breed their rice seeds and produce their own organic fertilizers. Other partner NGOs helped PAKISAMA members to expand and systematize their marketing programs.

I note happily: Farmers are trained to breed their rice, produce their organic fertilizer; PAKISAMA is helping the farmers expand and systematize their marketing. Yes! When you help the farmers, you have to help from seed to seed, from obtaining planting material to selling farm produce – for goodness’ sake!@517

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