On Father’s Day 2020, Know That I Dig The Digital!

I was 63 when that picture was taken, which I have digitized. 16 years later I found this Father’s Day poem I like (from Poetry Foundation):

Father[1]
By Edgar Albert Guest

My father knows the proper way
The nation should be run;
He tells us children every day
Just what should now be done.

He knows the way to fix the trusts,
He has a simple plan;
But if the furnace needs repairs,
We have to hire a man.

My father, in a day or two
Could land big thieves in jail;
There’s nothing that he cannot do,
He knows no word like “fail.”

“Our confidence” he would restore,
Of that there is no doubt;
But if there is a chair to mend,
We have to send it out.

All public questions that arise,
He settles on the spot;
He waits not till the tumult dies,
But grabs it while it’s hot.

In matters of finance he can
Tell Congress what to do;
But, O, he finds it hard to meet
His bills as they fall due.

It almost makes him sick to read
The things law-makers say;
Why, father’s just the man they need,
He never goes astray.

All wars he’d very quickly end,
As fast as I can write it;
But when a neighbor starts a fuss,
’Tis mother has to fight it.

In conversation father can
Do many wondrous things;
He’s built upon a wiser plan
Than presidents or kings.

He knows the ins and outs of each
And every deep transaction;
We look to him for theories,
But look to ma for action.

I am similarly inclined!

But my genius is 100% digital. Now dreaming, if I were:

Du30, I would declare all coronavirus lockdowns over, immediately! Then order Secretary of Agriculture William Dar to go all digital to help more farmers faster, the sooner the better.

Secretary of Education Leonor Briones, I would declare all classes online, and turn all schools into digital hubs for those who cannot afford personal computers and Internet connections each to have a place to learn.

Secretary Gringo Honasan of the Department of Information & Communication Technology, DICT, I would set up Computer Centers where people can train to Work From Home, WFH. Each deserving WFH graduate will be rewarded by DICT with a complete PC setup at home with space designated as office, and WiFi connection for WFH.

UP President Danilo Concepcion, I would order all technical journals within the UP System to digitize, to speed up publishing. UP is turtle-paced! I will have the language and technical editors trained digitally to cut the year-long wait for publishing into 2 months or shorter.

Chancellor Fernando C Sanchez of UP Los Baños, I would have all technical papers published by UPLB in the last 100 years transformed into popular articles understandable by laymen and immediately useful to them.

Yes, I am The Senior Citizen Who Is 100% Digital And The World’s Ambitious Genius Online!

(Digital Advisory: Free first-time email consultations on technical/popular publications and/or papers/articles. frankahilario@gmail.com.)@517

 

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[1]https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47684/father-56d2285059829

How PH Agriculture Can Cultivate Business-Minded Farmers – Thinking Super Coops

Yesterday, after I uploaded my essay “Enterprising Awards – In The Spirit Of Jose Rizal, We Need New Media Heroes For PH Agriculture![1]” (19 June 2020, THiNK Journalism), I realized that what I was asking the aggie journalists to do was impossible!

I was asking them to write about Small But Enterprising Farmers. That was an impossible task – no farmers in the Philippines as yet is minding his own business! (image “Mind Your Farm Business” from Real Agriculture[2])

What we have in journalistic articles in aggie media online and on print are mostly well-to-do farmers who of course succeeded in growing their farming business. They are not typical of poor farmers. What I was thinking of were small farmers who made big because they learned their entrepreneurial lessons. The problem is that right now, there are no trainings or classes to teach the small farmers to think big and handle their finances from cultivating to marketing and earn what is due them as producers of food.

What happens is that farmers borrow from usurers to pay for their seeds, fertilizers, farm chemicals, and some other perceived needs. They also borrow money during the lean months, of course at usurious rates, which they have to pay come harvest time – with the price of rice dictated by the merchant, who happens to be the one whom they owe their loan(s).

What to do? I am thinking that for farmers to rise from poverty to prosperity, we need to:

(1) Build Super Coops. These will provide everything that the member farmers need, from loans to inputs to machinery to marketing services.

(2) Train farmer entrepreneurs. Farmers must begin to think rich. Aside from serving the needs of the member farmers, Super Coops will train them to think like businessmen do – always considering costs & returns. For instance, if you borrow from a usurer, at the very beginning you are a loser.

And that is a job for Superman!

Actually, it’s a job for Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie. That is to say, he now has to think more of cultivating thinking farmers in his push for “The New Thinking For Agriculture.”

To produce those ideal farmers described above, I am thinking of 2 to 3 model multi-purpose coops, Super Coops, built in each of the 17 regions of the Philippines. The PH government, through the DA and public banks, as well as private partners, will help each of the Super Coops to acquire liquid assets as well as tools, machines, equipment, and warehouses for storage of harvests before and during marketing. That would require billions of pesos, but:

We have to invest big in our farmers for them to learn to invest big in themselves!

The farmer members will be trained in new or improved technologies and systems for cultivation, planting and/or transplanting, fertilization, pest management, harvesting, postharvest handling including drying, warehousing, and marketing.

Our small farmers will now have to be trained to mind their own (farm) business, a strange thought to each of them!@517

 

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[1]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/06/enterprising-awards-in-spirit-of-jose.html

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=sYhV8pMqeJg

Enterprising Awards – In The Spirit Of Jose Rizal, We Need New Media Heroes For PH Agriculture!

Lockdown or no lockdown, we want/need vigorous growth of the new PH Agriculture under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie – so we need new dedicated media heroes! Born today, our National Hero Jose Rizal was dedicated to agriculture – read my earlier essay, “Jose Rizal – We Forgot That He Lived A Farmer’s Life. And He Was Extraordinary[1]” (19 June 2020, THiNK Journalism).

For relevance, let us consider two kinds of journalist stories in media:
(1) Unique Entrepreneurship: Coming out with successful single-farmer-family relevant features or stories (current practice).
(2) Inspiring Entrepreneurship: Publishing multiple-farmer-family relevant features or stories (my proposal).

(1) Unique Entrepreneurship
In agriculture especially, in truth and in fact, unique entrepreneur stories are what prevail today. These are success stories that uplift the spirit – if you the farmer happens to have resources and circumstances similar to the one whose story is being told. This has been in vogue for the last 60 years in the Philippines; this is relevant to the people in those stories, as well as to their families – but irrelevant to a national campaign to invigorate PH agriculture especially for the poor farmers. Those single stories flaunt the success of the individuals, unfortunately not useful as guides to others because circumstances are dissimilar. (Ir/relevant image from Fred Thomson, One Rabbit[2])

(2) Inspiring Entrepreneurship
There is noneof this kind! We need stories that are more relevant to more farmers and their families, stories that encourage many in many places simultaneously.

“We believe in global scalability with local relevance[3],” says Gillian Tans, highly successful Dutch businesswoman (Wikipedia). Already, Manong Willie has come up with a complete package with national scalability and points to local relevances, plural – with his “The New Thinking For Agriculture” and its composite 8 paradigms (for these, see my essay cited above).

As I point out in the image above; “Enterprising Journalism: Stories relevant to the prosperity of thousands of PH farm families.” Your journalism must inspire thousands of families!

To help invigorate PH agriculture, I am hereby inspiring science writers to come up with rich nationally & locally applicable stories – those farmers can relate to and learn. I am referring to multipliable success stories. With those, science writers can help tremendously propel Philippine agriculture into a decade of prosperity for millions.

Let us call it Enterprising Journalism, where enterprising refers to both journalist and farmer. This is where journalists write stories of farmers succeeding in increasing their incomes – and sustaining such – assisted by the Department of Agriculture, DA, under The New Philippine Agriculture brought about by the leadership of Manong Willie – with each of those successes being replicable anywhere in the Philippines!

I hope to convince Manong Willie to sponsor an annual Enterprising Awards, different from the Binhi Awards. The Enterprising Awards are about successful farmers whose problematic circumstances proved solvable, thereby to encourage other farmers.

We need media heroes just as we need farmer heroes!@517

 

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[1]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/06/jose-rizal-we-forgot-that-he-lived.html

[2]https://www.onerabbit.com.au/blog/2016/02/why-being-irrelevant-today-is-more-relevant-than-its-ever-been/

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Tans

Jose Rizal – We Forgot That He Lived A Farmer’s Life, And He Was Extraordinary

June 19, the birthdate of our National Hero Jose Rizal, is notan official, no-work day in the Philippines. But I value it more than the date of death, 30 December – because the Spaniards killed his body but could not stifle his spirit of being a Filipino, the very first one to feel that way, and his legacy lives on! (images: Rizal’s nipa hut in Dapitan from Pusang Gala[1], Rizal & PH flag from STI[2])

I have done my own research on the lives and loves of Rizal, and in fact wrote and published in December 2005 a book titled indios bravos! subtitled Jose Rizal As Messiah Of The Redemption, 188 pages 8.5” x 11”, which I myself edited and did the desktop publishing work. It was a labor of love, as was Rizal’s labors when he was in Dapitan.

But I was pleasantly surprised when I reread his La Liga Filipina in “The Social And Political Ideas Of Jose Rizal As Expressed In His Writings,” a thesis presented to the Faculty of the Department of Spanish University of Southern California by Adrienne von Zelinski, August 1943. 131 pages, for a Master of Arts degree.

The surprise came in the list of the 5 primary aims of the Liga:

1.   To unite the whole archipelago into one compact, vigorous, and homogeneous body.

2.   Mutual protection in every want and necessity.

3.   Defense against violence and injustice.

4.   Encouragement of instruction, agriculture, and commerce.

5.   Study and application of reform.

#1, #2, #3 and #5 are radical enough, but I did not expect #4 – “Encouragement of instruction, agriculture, and commerce.” I forgot that when he was exiled to Dapitan in Mindanao, he lived there as a farmer. He got married too, to Josephine Bracken, a stranger from Hongkong who had accompanied Mr Taufer who visited Rizal for a medical purpose.

“Encouragement of instruction, agriculture, and commerce” – that today summarizes what Secretary of Agriculture William Dar is trying to do as head of the Department of Agriculture, DA, with 17 regional offices all over the Philippines. He calls it “The New Thinking For Agriculture” and supports it with what he calls “The 8 Paradigms”- and these are:

(1) Modernization. (2) Industrialization. (3) Promotion of exports. (4) Consolidation of small- and medium-sized farms (5) Infrastructure development. (6) Higher budget & investment. (7) Legislative support. (8) Roadmap development.

Moreover, My Hero! had a list of 15 Liga rules that all began with the word “Don’t” – and the last 6 should interest us greatly:

(10) Don’t abandon the poor man that has right on his side.
(11) Don’t forget those that although worthy have come to want.
(12) Don’t fail those without means that show application and ability.
(13) Don’t associate with immoral persons or with persons of bad habits.
(14) Don’t overlook the value to your country of new machinery and industries.
(15) Don’t cease at any time to work for the prosperity and welfare of our native land.

Wasn’t Jose Rizal great?!@517

 

 

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[1]https://jayexiomo.wordpress.com/tag/zamboanga-del-norte/

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=WOx-n5A4NjM

US of A, Mother Earth News – “Homemade Garden Liquid Fertilizers.” Philippines, Frank A Hilario – “No-Sweat Garden Fertilizers!”

From the Facebook sharing of Flarino Flauta, the left image says, “Free, Homemade Liquid Fertilizers” via Mother Earth News, MEN; the article is by Barbara Pleasant and is dated February-March 2011. 2011? Yes, it’s dated – but date is only 1 measure of usefulness.

The right image is my photograph of a poor neighborhood along the street where we live – the families do not know the riches they have!

The MEN liquid fertilizers referred to by Ms Barbara are organic, made from fish, grass clippings, seaweed, chicken manure, wood shavings, even urine.

She says you can mix grass clippings, seaweed and dried chicken manure, wood shavings with water (the ratios shown in the Homemade Fertilizer Tea Recipes Chart included in her article). You allow the tea (water mix) to sit for 3 days at room temperature, “giving (it) a good shake or stir once a day.” On the third day, “most of the soluble nutrients will have oozed out into the water solution” and you have a liquid fertilizer. Use it within a day or two.

Done? But you are not done. Ms Barbara says:

As a general guideline, most vegetables use the three major plant nutrients – nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – in a ratio of roughly 3-1-2: three parts nitrogen, one part phosphorus and two parts potassium. This means that an N-P-K ratio of 3-1-2 is more “balanced” in meeting plants’ needs than 1-1-1, the ratio many gardeners assume is best… The teas made from grass clippings and urine come closest to providing the optimum 3-1-2 ratio.

Miss Barbara, if I use homemade liquid fertilizer, I have to worry about the ratios of N-P-K!? As a gardener, I would be very lazy to do that.

Now, I am going to tell you an even lazier way to have your garden fertilizer right where you want to apply it. It’s also all free!

Look up now, to the right image, where you see 2 houses, some coconut and banana trees – and no garden. The red and yellow blossoms you see in the foreground grew by themselves, beautiful as they are. The photograph I took 10 years ago, exactly on the date of my birthday (3 months from now). I know they are squatters, the families in those houses have not taken advantage of the green, green grass of home – if I lived there, I would have turned those grasses into the best natural garden fertilizer in the world!

And no sweat! How? I will ask around the neighborhood and hire a hand tractor with rotavator blades. I will then have the rotavator pass over the whole place, repeating once if necessary – making sure that the rotating counter blades cut the weeds simultaneously with the soil, and mix those green and brown pieces together in one simple rotary motion – automatically laying a green-brown mulch all over! All I have to do now is wait for the mulch to decay and give up its richness to my vegetables.

That’s my Sweet No-Sweat Garden Fertilizer!@517

Sotto, Moreno, Robredo, Du30 & Briones Think Alike In Education – They All Need Education!

Surprised? This is a UP teacher alumnus speaking, self-taught digitally.

Above is a Facebook sharing by Nica Frencillo:

Pasig City prepares P1.2B for educational tablets, laptops (Daily Tribune)

Manila to spend P994M for tablets, laptops, data connection for students, teachers (GMA News Online)

Robredo office seeks gadget donations for online learning (ABS-CBN News)

Gov’t considers radios for alternative learning of poor students in far-flung areas (Manila Bulletin)

So, Mayor Vico Sotto of Pasig City and Mayor Isko Moreno of Manila are buying laptops for their students and teachers; and Vice President Leni Robredo is seeking donations for online learning – and President Rodrigo Duterte looks dejected that PH can only buy transistor radios for the remote students.

Si Duterte ba ay napag-iwanan ng panahon? Has Duterte been left behind the times? No! Actually, he is thinking exactly like Mayor Sotto, Mayor Moreno, Vice President Robredo – and the head of the Department of Education, DepEd, Leonor Magtolis Briones; they all think:

That education is simply Show & Tell – Who, What, Where, When, and Why to Think – not How to Think.

Even with all those free tablets and laptops, education is spoon-feeding: You, the student, this is good food for you, bite it well, swallow it, and remember the rest of your life.

The student is not allowed, not encouraged to think for oneself, because the teacher was not trained to teach like that!

Ms Briones and all those teachers do not know what they’re missing because they were all trained simply to follow instructions.

All schools from K to 12 to college would be exciting if the DepEd adopted and implemented Multiple Intelligences, MI, as the way to develop the learners into their best selves.

Instead, Ms Briones is thinking of “classic long-time approaches” to learning like free TV and radio programs. That is not learning, Madam – only filling empty vessels with what you think are important. You are treating the students like robots, just thinking exactly like they have been programmed to think. The teachers are teaching students not how to learn, not how to find out answers for themselves, not how to think for themselves.

In contrast, MI is the 37-year old educational theory of Harvard psychology professor Howard Gardner who posits that there are 9 intelligences in each of us:

(1) bodily-kinesthetic – body smart,
(2) existential – world smart,
(3) interpersonal – inner person smart,
(4) intrapersonal – people smart,
(5) linguistic – language smart,
(6) logical-mathematical – reasoning smart,
(7) musical-rhythmic – harmony smart,
(8) naturalistic – Nature smart,
(9) visual-spatial – relationship smart.

Just the listing and it gets exciting, right? Right!

We all have 9 intelligences, but our core genius may lie in only 1 of the intelligences – it is the job of the teacher to help the student find that single genius and nourish it.

If you applied the theory with each student, suddenly learning would become a much welcome activity! Why?

Because suddenly the student becomes a discoverer – s/he is going to discover himself/herself, where s/he is good at. If not, gadgets are only distractions!@517

To FAO Of The UN, Soil Is Important – But Not That Important!

Above is the Facebook sharing by Zia Ul Hassan Shah with an image. Above the image is the come-on, “Creativity invited. Give it a try guys.” Below the image is this entry:

Soil is a living resource, home to more than 25% of our planet’s biodiversity.

So, the Food & Agriculture Organization, FAO, of the United Nations is sponsoring a photo contest as well as a video contest on soil biodiversity because it is crucial to lives on earth, including ours.

Special note: Sorry, but the entry “Photo and video contest on soil biodiversity” is grammatically incorrect – it should read, “photo and video contests…”

My Facebook comment was:

Is this a joke? Prize is only $500!

It is not a FAO joke, but it is a joke! You call for creativity in photography and videography and you reward the winner each with only $500?! You are like saying:

Soil biodiversity is not that much important anyway! We just wanted the world not to forget about it, if only visually.

FAO, you are saying as an explanation for the visual contests (plural) these:

Soil biota constitutes the greatest concentration of biomass of any part of the planet, and is composed of an immeasurable amount of mega, macro, meso and microorganisms. This diverse community of living organisms keeps the soil healthy and fertile. This vast world constitutes soil biodiversity and determines the main biogeochemical processes that make life possible on Earth.

“Processes that make life possible on Earth” – now then, FAO, soil biodiversity is most important of all! The more reason to give a reward 50 or even 100 times higher than $500!

For the contests: The soil organisms expected in any photograph or video include toads, moles, rabbits, earthworms, termites, ants, millipedes, and woodlice (bigger & big), and bacteria, mites, insects, fungi and nematodes (smallest & small).

Contestants are required to submit high definition pictures; for the video contest, contestants are expected to submit short videos/time-lapses taken through any device, including a microscope.

The deadline for submission of entries is Tuesday, 30 June 2020, Manila time.

I was thinking of taking photographs of the soil, and then submitting them for the FAO photo contest – but FAO’s treatment of the soil keeps disturbing me.

FAO treats the soil’s biodiversity as important
but not important enough!

Here are wise words from the Soil Science Society of America[1]:

Soil provides ecosystem services critical for life: soil acts as a water filter and a growing medium; provides habitat for billions of organisms, contributing to biodiversity; and supplies most of the antibiotics used to fight diseases. Humans use soil as a holding facility for solid waste, filter for wastewater, and foundation for our cities and towns.

Says Sanjel J Parikh about the soil (Knowledge Project[2]):

Throughout human history, our relationship with the soil has affected our ability to cultivate crops and influenced the success of civilizations. This relationship between humans, the earth, and food sources affirms soil as the foundation of agriculture.

Without soil, FAO can only be FO!@517

 

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[1]https://soils.org/files/science-policy/sssa-marketing-2013.pdf

[2]https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-the-foundation-of-agriculture-84224268/