Her appointment follows the retirement of Arnel Del Barrio, who headed PCC for more than 6 years (Ma Cecilia C Irang, 01 July 2021, “Dr Liza Battad Named New Executive Director Of DA-PCC[1],” Facebook page, Department of Agriculture-Philippine Carabao Center).
The PCC is not new to Ms Liza. She has been PCC Chief Administrative Officer and Planning Officer. The carabao is not new to UP Los Baños either; above, I put the image of the Carabao Plaza to remind everyone that UPLB has had a special place for the carabao as beast of burden, but UPLB has not seen fit to relegate the farmer with his plow and carabao to the Museum of Natural History, given modern times!
I cannot blame UPLB for not acknowledging technology as replacing the carabao in working the farmer’s field; UPLB’s carabao program was taken over when the PCC was created and placed outside the University’s jurisdiction.
Nonetheless, every time I visit the UPLB campus, it looks to me like it is still idolizing the plowman & his animal – the images are out there for campus visitors tonot miss. For goodness sake! In the animal’s place, the hand tractor was invented in 1910, or 91 years ago[2]! (Wikipedia).
(image of Carabao Plaza[3] from “University Library, UP Diliman,” Facebook.com)
It is not the carabao that is wrong in PH Agriculture. As an agriculturist who reads and reads, I have come to know it is the plowitself:
The moldboard plow destroys the soil structure. We are insane not to see that the moldboard, now the disc plow, destroys what nature has created to best grow vegetation!
(If you want more details of the above assertion of mine, read my 26 March 2018 essay, “Organic Farming & The Lesson Of The Rotavator: How To Feed The World[4],” Organic Country, Blogspot.com).
So, the carabao is the worst for plowing!
If Ms Liza is listening, my advice is that the carabao is best for meat and milk – if we raise the animal with forage and silage grown via organic or natural farming.
Ms Liza has a PhD in Community Development and an MS in Agribusiness Management, both from UPLB. Hereby, I encourage her to encourage the PCC people to encourage farmer cooperatives much more than individualist farmers – power to encourage by number!
Millions of us Filipinos, not to mention the world’s waiting mouths, need millions of bottles of healthy carabao’s milk and millions of kilos of healthy carabeef – if that is not agribusiness, I don’t know what is.
With more coops raising more carabaos, the better for our children in school, for adults everywhere, not to mention us seniors.
And thereby the Beast of Burden becomes the Best of Burden!@517
[1]https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=dr%20liza%20battad%20named%20new%20executive%20director%20of%20da-pcc
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-wheel_tractor
[3]https://www.facebook.com/UPDLibrary/posts/trivia-time-shout-out-to-uplb-i-wish-the-chocomilk-from-dtri-is-available-here-i/10152873042328323/
[4]http://organiccountry.blogspot.com/2018/03/organic-farming-lesson-of-rotavator-how.html
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