As an agriculturist and a creative warrior writer, I believe I have come up with an excellent idea to bring PH Agriculture from Worry to Wealth. I hereby propose to the Department of Agriculture (DA) this Program:
digCOOPERATIVES: Digitalized Cooperatives Engaged In Regenerative Agriculture Towards Institutionalizing Village Economies Of Scale.
(hearts-in-sync image[1] from Pinterest)
My blog’s slogan applies here: “It takes a village to make a nation!”
Cooperatives
Coops are excellent instruments by which farmers can make loans anytime and pay the minimum.
Personally, I know cooperatives. On 05-08-2017, I was elected to the Board of Directors (BOD) of the Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Cooperative (in above image, see “F. Hilario” under “Newly Elected BODs”). Nagkaisa is in Asingan, Pangasinan, my hometown.
An agency under the DA, the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) can channel funds in the millions of pesos to cooperatives all over the country for digCOOPERATIVES.
Regenerative Agriculture (RA)
To ensure that agriculture can become field-smart, farmer-smart, climate-smart and pocket-smart for every village, regenerative agriculture will be practiced; this will also ensure economies of scale.
RA works with the laws of Mother Nature and the economic laws of Homo sapiens. The farmer restores naturally what his crops and animals obtain from the field: fertility & water, and his agriculture keeps giving back a hundredfold!
Economies of Scale
The farmers do not practice economies of scale of anything – they sow too much seeds; they over-plant; they buy expensive fertilizers and pesticides; they waste their produce by drying carelessly; they sell individually, not in groups.
My Experience With Farmers
As a farmer’s son in Asingan, Pangasinan; as a student going after his BS Agriculture major in Ag Edu at the UP College of Agriculture (now UP Los Baños), graduating in 1965; as a field consultant for the Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity and Economic Services (ARCCESS) extension project of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in 2017 under UPLB Professor Rene Rafael C Espino as Team Leader – I have seen the limits of the thinking of farmers. ARCCESS was slow-moving, being not digital. And no, DAR did not have working cooperatives, only associations.
Actually, cooperatives and regenerative agriculture are already designed for economies of scale – I just put them together in a new way to come up with an exciting intellectual product that is at the same time clearly operationable.
How About Budget?
ANN has this news, “DA Seeks P40-B Additional Budget[2]”(Author Not Named, 25 October 2021, Manila Times), the DA seeking those additional billions “for next year to jumpstart and unleash the potential of the agriculture sector as the country recovers from the devastation of the pandemic.” Secretary of Agriculture William Dar says, “We can do a lot (more with more projects and programs) if the budget is higher. If they add another P40 billion, we will be more than happy.”
With Program digCOOPERATIVES, I’m sure millions of Filipino farmers will be more than happy!@517
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