Time for rice to change extension tactics! My iSRI is planting 1K sqm at a time, piecemeal agriculture, designed for you to try and get more for less; when you succeed, lesson learned – small input, big output!
Above: Top image, 1,000-square-meter plot[1] is from Village People Philippines. Bottom image, SRI rice[2] from SANDRP: Left bunch is SRI rice – need I say more?
My iSRI turns out to be an Initial System of Rice Instruction, another iSRI. So, via iSRI, the farmer can apply different technologies and systems. Whatever the results in each try, he will be glad he did!
Revolutionary: To convince any farmer of any new technology or system, ask him to do his own iSRI!
A parallel move to revolutionize PH Agriculture is for Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) itself to generate iSRI results in each of the 81 provinces in the Philippines.
Considering all of the above, I am proposing to the PH Department of Agriculture (DA) headed by Secretary of Agriculture William Dar to financially support PhilRice for generating a digital Knowledge Bank on Rice (KBR), with up-to-date scientific knowledge.
The KBR I am thinking of is unlike any website you know or have seen so far. But first, this story.
On 21 March 2009, I published “Geography Of Rice[3]” in another blog, A Magazine Called Love. This is the very first paragraph:
On New Year’s Eve of 2003, working as a Creative Consultant/Writer for PhilRice, I finished writing a book, The Geography Of Rice, all 198 pages of it. I didn’t know I was going to get fired the next day! But that’s not my story this time; that’s water under the bridge – when I was informed, very formally by letter, I blinked, and then in the next breath forgave them all for knowing what they did and not knowing more.
“To err is human, to forgive divine” – Alexander Pope.
(I was already Editor In Chief of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science at that time.)
To err is human, and the farmer is human – the more reason to provide him instructions even before he needs any of them. That is the goal of the KBR I am proposing again to PhilRice. Again because my book does in fact cover all the bases in generating a knowledge bank excellent for people who do not know anything about rice farming, including pointing out options that can be taken.
If your Knowledge Bank simply tells people what to think and what to do, you are not cultivating the farmers! Betterto please keep it all to yourself.@517
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