Digital ATI – PH, The Best Is Yet To Come!

Today, when more farmers want to learn more, you better teach much better – and more intelligently!

Learning agriculture can now 
become more exciting – if ATI 
becomes more excited.

News: In faraway Visayas, “Governor Asks ATI To Accredit More Agricultural Learning Sites In Bohol[1]” reports Minerva Newman (07 August 2020, Manila Bulletin):

Bohol Governor Arthur Yap (has) asked the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI-7) to support farming learning centers and accredit more agricultural learning sites in his bid to push and boost food security through massive production, especially now that the COVID-19 crisis and home quarantine (have) forced more families to focus on backyard farming/agriculture for (their) own food (supplies).

“Massive production” – more food grown by more families for themselves. Mr Yap, a former PH Secretary of Agriculture, sees the need for much more food produced locally. I wonder what other PH governors are thinking during these lockdown times.

He needs more help. Mr Yap asks “to support farming learning centers” – fund and/or equip existing centers; “to accredit more agricultural learning sites” – add to the physical fields already being used for training.

In fact, under Bohol Regional Director Carolyn Mae Daquio, ATI-7 has accredited 19 Agricultural Learning Sites “where people who are inclined to learn about new agricultural technologies can go, practice and learn.” Miss Carolyn says those learning centers are actually farms in operation strategically located in the 3 districts of Bohol.

We should all be inclined. Those 19 sites are not enough. (Imagine if all governors of 81 PH provinces asked for more learning sites simultaneously? Not bad, but there would be national pandemonium!)

Anticipating, I have already recommended that ATI make all training digital – theories, practices, techniques, tips, lessons captured in various digital formats – available anytime, anyplace, anywhere (see my essay, “From 16 Weeks To 1-Day Organic Farming Training – Farmers Learning Digital, Trainors First![2]”)

In 2 words, I am recommending a thoroughly:

Digital ATI.

And so I present a borrowed image above, that of “e-learning access” (from TheStar[3]) – where you see several mouses simultaneously searching for data or information or insight from the digital universe of knowledge.

Limited to 6 mouses simultaneously clicking? No! You can multiply them into 600 or 6000 clicking on the same icon or object at the same time, and there would not be a noticeable delay. That is a digital field for learning – much unlike a physical field for learning, where you can accommodate only so many physical bodies.

Digital ATI whole hog is the way to go!

For everyone, not only in Bohol but ATI anywhere can make digital records of farming from planning to producing to postharvest handling to promoting, with video, audio and captions. Plus countless downloadable reading materials.

No only 19 learning sites, you can have 19 times 1,000 sites visited digitally at anytime!

I notice the Bohol learning sites are all for organic farming. PH Agriculture needs more learning opportunities. Organic, inorganic, hybrid, inbred, SRI, multiple cropping – more choices, options. What’s digital for?!

Digital ATI. Anyhow, for all Choosers and Learners!@517

 

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[1]https://mb.com.ph/2020/08/07/governor-asks-ati-to-accredit-more-agricultural-learning-sites-in-bohol/?fbclid=IwAR3zHxogHUeDTbyad3_FV_XIi4Pr8X3lrHOwRTSFhf2Zodgxey9tYr_9EHM

[2]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/08/from-16-weeks-to-1-day-organic-farming.html

[3]https://www.thestar.com.my/news/education/2020/05/03/improve-e-learning-access-and-make-it-a-permanent-feature

Digital ATI – PH, The Best Is Yet To Be!

Today, when more farmers want to learn more, you better teach much better – and more intelligently!

Learning agriculture can now
become more exciting – if ATI
becomes more excited.

News: In faraway Visayas, “Governor Asks ATI To Accredit More Agricultural Learning Sites In Bohol[1]” reports Minerva Newman (07 August 2020, Manila Bulletin):

Bohol Governor Arthur Yap (has) asked the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI-7) to support farming learning centers and accredit more agricultural learning sites in his bid to push and boost food security through massive production, especially now that the COVID-19 crisis and home quarantine (have) forced more families to focus on backyard farming/agriculture for (their) own food (supplies).

“Massive production” – more food grown by more families for themselves. Mr Yap, a former PH Secretary of Agriculture, sees the need for much more food produced locally. I wonder what other PH governors are thinking during these lockdown times.

He needs more help. Mr Yap asks “to support farming learning centers” – fund and/or equip existing centers; “to accredit more agricultural learning sites” – add to the physical fields already being used for training.

In fact, under Bohol Regional Director Carolyn Mae Daquio, ATI-7 has accredited 19 Agricultural Learning Sites “where people who are inclined to learn about new agricultural technologies can go, practice and learn.” Miss Carolyn says those learning centers are actually farms in operation strategically located in the 3 districts of Bohol.

We should all be inclined. Those 19 sites are not enough. (Imagine if all governors of 81 PH provinces asked for more learning sites simultaneously? Not bad, but there would be national pandemonium!)

Anticipating, I have already recommended that ATI make all training digital – theories, practices, techniques, tips, lessons captured in various digital formats – available anytime, anyplace, anywhere (see my essay, “From 16 Weeks To 1-Day Organic Farming Training – Farmers Learning Digital, Trainors First![2]”)

In 2 words, I am recommending a thoroughly:

Digital ATI.

And so I present a borrowed image above, that of “e-learning access” (from TheStar[3]) – where you see several mouses simultaneously searching for data or information or insight from the digital universe of knowledge.

Limited to 6 mouses simultaneously clicking? No! You can multiply them into 600 or 6000 clicking on the same icon or object at the same time, and there would not be a noticeable delay. That is a digital field for learning – much unlike a physical field for learning, where you can accommodate only so many physical bodies.

Digital ATI whole hog is the way to go!

For everyone, not only in Bohol but ATI anywhere can make digital records of farming from planning to producing to postharvest handling to promoting, with video, audio and captions. Plus countless downloadable reading materials.

No only 19 learning sites, you can have 19 times 1,000 sites visited digitally at anytime!

I notice the Bohol learning sites are all for organic farming. PH Agriculture needs more learning opportunities. Organic, inorganic, hybrid, inbred, SRI, multiple cropping – more choices, options. What’s digital for?!

Digital ATI. Anyhow, for all Choosers and Learners!@517

 

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[1]https://mb.com.ph/2020/08/07/governor-asks-ati-to-accredit-more-agricultural-learning-sites-in-bohol/?fbclid=IwAR3zHxogHUeDTbyad3_FV_XIi4Pr8X3lrHOwRTSFhf2Zodgxey9tYr_9EHM

[2]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/08/from-16-weeks-to-1-day-organic-farming.html

[3]https://www.thestar.com.my/news/education/2020/05/03/improve-e-learning-access-and-make-it-a-permanent-feature

Ilocanos – Historically, We Are Farmers Of Quality!

Ilocano-ak.

I am Ilocano. Ilocanoness, I am in favor of a Federal Philippines. My grandfather Graciano Hilario has roots in Rosario, La Union. The family name of my mother, Sixta, is Agapito, Ilocano meaning to harvest.

With a Federal Ilocos Region, we Ilocanos would dig back enthusiastically through the centuries and learn more about our ancestors and how they lived and loved. (images  from Ilocano people[1], Ilocano women from Santa Catalina, Ilocos Sur ca 1900, Wikiwand)

Peter Xenos of Chulalongkorn University tells me in “The Ilocos Coast Since 1800: Population Pressure, The Ilocano Diaspora And Multiphasic Response” (January 1998, downloadable from ResearchGate), that

The Ilocos Coast achieved very high agrarian population densities long before most other areas of the Philippines and Southeast Asia. As a result, since before the mid-nineteenth century and for about a century thereafter, the region has exhibited a demography quite distinct for Southeast Asia.

We Ilocanos became the first people to be most industrious and populous farmers in the Philippines and Southeast Asia! That is telling me, “Ilocanos are farmers of quality.”

The Ilocano people are well known as migrants – to the Cagayan Valley, the Central Plain of Luzon, Zambales, Metropolitan Manila, Hawaii and elsewhere.

I know. My father himself, Dionisio, went to Hawaii as a sugarcane plantation worker. He did not talk about it, but I know he left the plantation as a stowaway in a boat – he had no money saved. He was not going to be a wage slave forever.

There was another intriguing thing about my father. As a rice farmer, before any harvester cut the first rice stalk, he would visit the whole field and cut off the richest-looking panicles of all. They would provide some seeds to go into the next crop – surely to give higher yields. An Agriculturist, I did not teach him that; my alma mater UP Los Baños did not teach me that. I told you: The Ilocanos are innate farmers of quality!

Federalism. With an Ilocano Regional State, we Ilocanos could find out more about us Ilocanos.

In subsistence terms, most of the lowland Ilocos population was settled in permanent villages by at least the end of the sixteenth century. Livelihood was based on a mixture of crops, including rice grown with a wet rice technology, and fishing.

The Ilocanos will settle, and settle well, when they will.

Adrian De Leon writes in “Sugarcane Sakadas: The Corporate Production Of The Filipino On A Hawai‘I Plantation[2]:”

This article traces a genealogy of “Filipino” ethnicity to plantations and labor management from the nineteenth century to 1913… Financial institutions… used ethnicity to manage Ilokano… migrant workers, who enjoyed relatively high mobility by virtue of their American colonial status. These institutions drew upon racial regimes developed through nineteenth-century Spanish agriculture, which generated an inland peasantry through the dispossession of their native lifeways.

With a federal Ilocos Region, we Ilocanos would happily dig into those buried native lifeways we were dispossessed of by the Spanish conquistadores.

All the more reason to welcome the Ilocano-ness in my heart.@517

 

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[1]https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ilocano_people

[2]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331687979_Sugarcane_Sakadas_The_Corporate_Production_of_the_Filipino_on_a_Hawai%27i_Plantation

Postharvest – To Make 5Ps For The New PH DA Under Secretary Of Agriculture William Dar!

 

Certainly, the Plant, Plant, Plant Program, 4Ps, of the PH DA under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar is more than important: it is indispensable.

We forgot another P.

Now, when you plant, plant, plant – you produce. And we all forgot what happens, or should happen, when we produce. There is a missing P!

Postharvest.

I am an alumnus of UP Los Baños; I was working as Chief Information Officer of the Forest Research Institute when the Postharvest Horticulture Training & Research Center, PHTRC, was set up in 1977 via the ASEAN-Australian Economic Cooperation Program. (Who was PH President when the PHTRC was established? My favorite Bad-Boy-Best President, FM.)

Even I, an alumnus of UPCA, now UPLB, have forgotten this 43-year old very important part, VIP, of my University – we forget what is not always intruding into our sight, VIP or not.

The PHTRC is a unit of the College of Agriculture & Food Science, CAFS, of UP Los Baños. Note that the old CA has become CAFS – it has to be. You cannot practice agriculture without producing food! And you have to handle food right, right?

Postharvest has something to do with the “oversupply” of farm produce coming from anywhere in the Philippines. One example: On 10 January 2019, farmers in the Cordillera Administrative Region “were forced to dispose of their vegetables due to oversupply and lack of means to transport the harvest to market[1],” as reported by Reicelene Joy N Ignacio (“DA To Compensate Cordillera Farmers For Dumped Crops,” BusinessWorld Online). Certainly not an isolated case. That happened 18 months ago, and even I have hardly thought about how to prevent that from happening again.

I should have been the last person to forget postharvest. My daughter Daphne Cassandra works as a Research Associate at the PHTRC of UPLB. She has gone many places in the Philippines for the sake of improving postharvest produce of PH vegetables and fruits. I edited the English language text at late 2019 of the Center’s “Primer On Postharvest Handling Of Perishable Crops,” 93 pages, authored by OK Bautista, AL Acedo Jr & AC Castro (above is the cover photo of that brochure). Sometimes we forget what is right in front of our noses.

So now I am recommending that our Secretary of Agriculture, who has a PhD in Horticulture from UP Los Baños, 1987, include a DA budget for current postharvest handling of farm produce – as well as in the next year’s budget. How about P3 billion for new PHTRC buildings and facilities at UP Los Baños, additional courses and staff, and an information center dedicated to postharvest handling, including digital trainings and exchanges?

The harvests we save are our own!

We must make good use of produce before they become oversupplies – how about processing vegetables and fruits for the export markets?

Whether the farm produce are for PH consumers or any exports, until they have contributed their hidden wealths to human bodies, may our fresh perishable products not perish from the Earth!@517

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[1]https://www.bworldonline.com/da-to-compensate-cordillera-farmers-for-dumped-crops/

aFactbook – Forward To A New PH Agriculture Of Prosperity!

As an Ilocano aboriginal original, I Frank A Hilario have a new radical proposal: For Philippine agriculture heads in administration and academe to cause to be created a Facebook world-alike called aFactbook.

With aFactbook, we Filipinos will enjoy a double-featured Facebook!

The 2 faces above are those of PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar and the recipient of my unsolicited advice to the Board of Trustees of the UP System (see my essay, “Who Will Be The Chancellor Of The Brave New World Of UPLB?^[1]” 08 August 2020, BraveNewWorld.PH):

Patrick Alain T Azanza
UP Los Baños Chancellor 2020

I know Dar has been digital-minded in at least the last 17 years; I just learned Azanza has been immersed in the digital universe for years – and those heads we need today in moving PH Agriculture:

Forward to a new Philippine Prosperity!

Yes! Gentlemen and ladies, as we Filipinos are the most ubiquitous denizens of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Dedicated to the PH New Normal, we Filipinos need a parallel universe – aFactbook – for all the Arts & Sciences, to help develop these islands into a new, archipelagic Garden of Eden. The coronavirus pandemic should not lock us down to being only bystanders!

If you ask me, Agriculture is the Very First Art of the World, starting at the Garden of Eden. The Genesis story is that Adam and Eve failed as gardeners, and so they drove themselves out of the Garden.

I hope Mankind is not going to fail again taking care of the New Garden of Eden.

aFactbook – imagineered between the DA and UPLB.

I see the non-confines of a collective universe that is unlimited in being:

informative,
insistent,
insightful,
inspiring,
intellectual,
interesting,
provocative
– but above all polite.

Not unlike Zuckerberg’s universally beloved Facebook, but dedicated to The New Garden of Eden: The Philippine Islands.

aFactbook. in this new digital universe, we will fill in the facts, facets, features, stories, surmises, theories, conclusions, whatever surrounding and within these islands of the Philippines directly and indirectly related to agriculture.

aFactbook is a parallel universe where, as in Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, we Filipinos can discuss anything under the sun.

aFactbook. For all Internet denizens, this is a universe we want! And we can create it at will.

As a UPLB alumnus, my new challenge to Azanza is related to Dar’s 17-year old challenge he called Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture, OpAPA, which he submitted to PH Agriculture via PhilRice when he was still Director General of ICRISAT. With aFactbook aborning, I wish to be among the creators of that new digital universe – after all, as PhilRice consultant I wrote what I proposed was a theoretical-practical operations digital book for OpAPA 17 years ago yet: The Geography Of Knowledge. (Interested? available as ecopy, 198 pages: frankahilario@gmail.com).

aFactbook should be easy to access via something even the farmers are now familiar with, the cellphone, which will then go revolutionize PH Agriculture.

With aFactbook, we Filipinos will be cultivating our own geniuses! Isn’t that genius?@517

 

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[1]https://bravenewworldph.blogspot.com/2020/08/who-will-be-chancellor-of-brave-new.html

Who Will Be The Chancellor Of The Brave New World Of UPLB?

As an alumnus of UP Los Baños, 1965, I remember all Chancellors did love the academe much more than they did the farmers – there were no full-scale farmer-directed programs or projects based on new or improved science coming from the University. Today, I hope the story will be bravely different.

The 3 candidates for the UPLB chancellorship this year are:

Patrick Alain T Azanza  
Jose V Camacho Jr 
Fernando C Sanchez Jr

“Three Vie For UPLB Chancellorship” says the uplb.edu.ph news headline. They presented their Vision, Plans and Programs 05 August 2020 at 9 AM via Zoom; the proceedings can be viewed at the UPLB ITC Facebook page[1].

When I look at their individual submissions of Vision, Plans & Programs downloadable from the uplb.edu.ph website, I am disappointed with the two and encouraged by the one.

As a UPLB alumnus who has been in and out of the campus in the last 10 years, I hardly know them. Since I am nosy for news as creative writer and a digital man, if self-taught, I hope that any of those candidates is digital-savvy, the kind of Chancellor I believe is the need of the times.

Sanchez has a PhD in Landscape Architecture obtained from the Tokyo University of Agriculture. Strictly speaking, that’s Horticulture, not Agriculture.

Camacho is an Economics professor and has been Dean of the UPLB Graduate School since 2012. His vision is to “future-proof” UPLB, whatever that means, and to maintain its relevance by “developing methods, approaches, and framework to minimize the cost and impacts of shocks of future events.” He is talking about the coronavirus lockdown but not beyond.

Azanza has a PhD in Educational Administration from UP Diliman. His Vision is to “harness the University’s potentials” in development communication, eLearning, information science, and technology. 

Azanza's my brave man!

I like what he says about agriculture and education:

As we inevitably welcome the Internet of Things (IoT) and other technology advancements, UPLB has that distinct role in defining the academic boundaries and depths by which such technologies and scientific applications shall fit into the University’s curricular offerings in order to develop knowledge and skills that can be put to meaningful use in the industries,

Nonetheless. Azanza is thinking the thoughts of the industries, not the thoughts of farmers in the countryside! Yet, this is where it can all begin.

The audience during the presentations by the nominees comprised the different sectors of the University: students, alumni, and faculty, “to hopefully gain their support.” I say why did they not invite farmers from Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao “to hopefully gain their support”?

It seems that the once University of the Philippines’ College of Agriculture had forgotten that it began with the American tutors as a Cow College – there are no carabaos as beasts of burden in the United States – in the end, it is the duty of UP Los Baños to serve the digital needs of the farmers, minus carabaos, especially now that they are ready with their cellphones!@517

 

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[1]https://www.facebook.com/itc.uplb/live/

Time For Any New UPLB Chancellor To Ally With Secretary Of Agriculture William Dar!

As an alumnus of UP Los Baños, 1965, I remember all Chancellors did love the academe much more than they did the farmers – there were no full-scale farmer-directed programs or projects based on new or improved science coming from the University. Today, I hope the story will be entirely different.

The 3 candidates for the UPLB chancellorship this year are:

Patrick Alain T Azanza  
Jose V Camacho Jr
Fernando C Sanchez Jr

“Three Vie For UPLB Chancellorship” says the uplb.edu.ph news headline. They presented their Vision, Plans and Programs 05 August 2020 at 9 AM via Zoom; the proceedings can be viewed at the UPLB ITC Facebook page[1].

When I look at their individual submissions of Vision, Plans & Programs downloadable from the uplb.edu.ph website, I am disappointed with the two and encouraged by the one.

As a UPLB alumnus who has been in and out of the campus in the last 10 years, I hardly know them. Since I am nosy for news as creative writer and a digital man, if self-taught, I hope that any of those candidates is digital-savvy, the kind of Chancellor I believe is the need of the times.

Sanchez has a PhD in Landscape Architecture obtained from the Tokyo University of Agriculture. Strictly speaking, that’s Horticulture, not Agriculture.

Camacho is an Economics professor and has been Dean of the UPLB Graduate School since 2012. His vision is to “future-proof” UPLB, whatever that means, and to maintain its relevance by “developing methods, approaches, and framework to minimize the cost and impacts of shocks of future events.” He is talking about the coronavirus lockdown but not beyond.

Azanza has a PhD in Educational Administration from UP Diliman. His Vision is to “harness the University’s potentials” in development communication, eLearning, information science, and technology. That’s my man!

I like what he says about agriculture and education:

As we inevitably welcome the Internet of Things (IoT) and other technology advancements, UPLB has that distinct role in defining the academic boundaries and depths by which such technologies and scientific applications shall fit into the University’s curricular offerings in order to develop knowledge and skills that can be put to meaningful use in the industries,

Nonetheless. Azanza is thinking the thoughts of the industries, not the thoughts of the farmers in the countryside! Yet, this is where it can all begin.

The audience during the presentations by the nominees comprised the different sectors of the University: students, alumni, and faculty, “to hopefully gain their support.” I say why did they not invite farmers from Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao “to hopefully gain their support”?

It seems that the once University of the Philippines’ College of Agriculture had forgotten that it began with the American tutors as a Cow College – there are no carabaos as beasts of burden in the United States – in the end, it is the duty of UP Los Baños to serve the digital needs of the farmers, minus carabaos, especially now that they are ready with their cellphones!@517

 

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[1]https://www.facebook.com/itc.uplb/live/