March 16, 2007
TO : Mrs. Concordia ‘Nang Connie’ Geniston
FROM: Arnulfo ‘Cocoy’ Laniba
RE : SOLUTION TO EXPENSIVE & IRRELEVANT EDUCATION
Dear Nang Connie:
It can be recalled that while I was explaining my strategy to improve the skills through better tools and additional know-how as our means to increase income of our men, you interrupted me and asked if I don’t have a plan for the EDUCATION OF OUR CHILDREN.
I just answered that it will be also addressed, but I did not answer you in details. It’s now Friday, 3 days after I saw your worried face and I could not erase the meaning you impressed to my heart: MOTHERS ARE VERY WORRIED ABOUT THE EDUCATION – AND READ: FUTURE - OF THEIR CHILDREN!
I have a few guesses why you, mothers, still worry even if there are plenty of high schools and colleges and universities in the country today.
About private schools: becoming very expensive while the effect or quality, although still generally superior than government schools, is still “JOIN THE VAST UNEMPLOYED” or “JOIN THE OFWs” where your diploma is not worth more than the qualification to work abroad as maids, or servants, slaves and prostitutes!!
In short, our COLLEGE DIPLOMA has no value abroad! And here, to many graduates, DIPLOMA = UNEMPLOYMENT!?
Isn’t that discouraging? Disheartening? Confusing?
Certainly it is!
For a mother to be aware of this “unemployment at home” and “cruel employment abroad” makes her heart bleed in sorrow and pain.
Government schools: Quality getting better in vocational courses but still inferior to private as far as the baccalaureate (white collar) courses is concerned, while tuition fees and weekly expenses, even if far lower than those of the private schools, is still becoming unaffordable to very poor parents.
SOLUTIONS:
For us poor parents, GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS is the default choice. Private schools are becoming more expensive.
As to your worry about TOP CALIBER INSTRUCTORS & HIGH QUALITY INSTRUCTION & SUPERIOR FACILITIES, this is true for their what we can call “high-class” courses: medicine, nursing, computers, engineering, architecture and other sciences. Private schools excel in this area. To take up these courses in inferior government colleges is to confine our students to mediocre education, except perhaps if the student is intelligent; this can offset. But for the rest whose IQ is average or below average, to send them to schools where teachers are not expert in these courses, and the instructions and facilities are poor, this is CONFINING OUR STUDENTS TO A LIFE OF MEDIOCRITY & POVERTY. Only a few with initiative would break up this fate and go on to do better than those educated in schools where the instructors and facilities are better. On-the-Job Training (OJT) and working in companies which offer real or actual experience of the course you studied is a wise strategy a poor but intelligent student can use; this can greatly offset the poor education government colleges gave. Good companies send their ‘star’ employees to special short-term trainings and seminars, in addition to their in-house trainings. This is an excellent continuation-education for the children of the poor.
However, before the role of the company comes in, we do well to think of other “offset” means. THIS LEADS ME TO DESIGN WHAT WE MAY CALL “QUALITY EDUCATION FOR THE POOR”.
This is not impossible. But what do we mean by “Quality Education for the Poor”?
First, let us let the dream of our hearts be articulated. What do all of us really want? Where do we want to work, live, retire, and die?
The easy answer is: HERE AT HOME!
Therefore, our POOR’S EDUCATION must be opposite to the present one which educates us to do works not found in our barangays! The present so-called modern education is pushing our children away from home, parents, loved ones! It is taking our children to the cities and foreign countries!
If only the parents and relatives of these overseas Filipinos knew the sufferings these OFWs went and are going through!
God the Father wants us to be happy, intact as a family, living in peace, love and freedom from poverty and oppression.
It is easy to happen in the place God gave us to be our home. But in other countries, it is not so easy.
My line of ambition is simple: If I have my God, my family, relatives, friends, and sufficient work and freedom to grow in peace, love, then, what more would I ask for? I need nothing else. Ordinary, simple living, not so poor, not so rich, where our need is provided with God’s help on time. A simple house, a simple living, but well-cultivated mind and heart in the love of God, neighbor and self. A life which is assured of Christ’s salvation and dedicated for the salvation of the fellowmen. A life which is blessed with heath, peace, happiness, and freedom. A life where we are with the ones we love and the ones who care for us, including our parents whom we owe much.
If we can convince our children of such simple ambition instead of going abroad to build royal houses, while they fail to build a stable home, with wives committing adultery and children becoming drug addicts, then we have accomplished the first step: CURBING MATERIALISTIC AMBITION that, quoting the apostle Paul, led people to “fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction…” and led people to “wander from the faith and pierce themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:9-10).
That is SPIRITUAL EDUCATION affecting the heart and mind.
The second step is for us parents and leaders to BE ABLE TO GIVE OUR CHILDREN THE EDUCATION AND WORK OPPORTUNITIES WHERE THEY CAN EARN SUFFICIENTLY FOR THEIR FAMILIES AND EXTENDED RELATIVES.
I am referring to AGRO-INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT as the first twin areas to generate livelihood and jobs for our succeeding generations HERE IN OUR BACKYARD! I really wonder why our leaders and fathers had not seen to it that we would not be driven out of our home and country by poverty to hostile foreign lands. I envy, to tell you the truth, the government policy of the Germany, Japan, the U.S. and other mature governments: they see to it that their people are well-fed, well-clothed, sheltered and secure at home – in their own country! My heart bleeds to see this is not the case in our own land. We are beaten by government graft and corruption and massive poverty and unemployment so that we are forced to migrate – against our own will – against the desire of our hearts!
If my little strength be a mustard seed, so that from it, the strength of Hercules can be mustered, then, I would like to sow this little strength – in my humble effort to stop or reverse the trend. I WORK TO STOP OR SLOW DOWN THE EXODUS OF OUR YOUTH AND OUR WOMEN (MOTHERS AND WIVES) TO THE FAR-AWAY CITIES AND TO STRANGE LANDS AND COUNTRIES USUALLY HOSTILE TO US and where they would be oppressed!
And this effort should be focused, among others, in generating IN-HOME AGRO-INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT enough to feed our youth, women and children.
This is the task of men.
And this is where government schools can focus! This is the area which the government is better prepared of than our private colleges and universities.
Our goals:
· Create farmers who are also scientists and entrepreneurs. Add science and entrepreneurships to farming.
· Enlightened science, godly chemistry = study of God’s wise and loving Order and ordained processes and to work according to such wise Order, not against it, nor to foolishly alter it due to plain personal arrogance.
· Christian Chemistry where we study God’s chemical elements and their Nature’s God-ordained interactions, not make our own combinations to cut corners, make short-cuts, violate God’s law of patience, just to attain personal GREED AND THE GET-RICH-QUICK mentality.
· For example: To understand how God has arranged Nature or the environment to make its own fertilizers, and not the synthetic, lab-made inorganic fertilizer of German chemist Fritz Haber, the urea, which has destroyed the soil of the nations all over the world and given breast and cervical cancers to our women and cancers and various physical and mental deformities to our infants and children!
· After we understand God’s natural processes, ours is to ‘ride on it’ so to speak, not to oppose it, nor alter it, but instead to support it for maximum effect. For example, instead of burning the weeds and leaves, we should instead gather more weeds to fill our compost pits! Instead of killing the earthworms and microbes with the inorganic chemical fertilizers and pesticides, let us not only stop using such chemical fertilizers and pesticides but also help our earthworms and microbes thrive such as by plowing our land from time to time to make the soil softer for the earthworms to easily move and thrive! We have to remove or stop pouring chemicals into our soil which will destroy these friendly micro-animals created by God to make the soil fertile for man.
· We now know that trees are necessary to ‘create’ better climate, that is, to make rains regular and sufficient. Therefore, as scientist-farmers, we must be expert in tree growing. We must know God’s ways – where to plant trees so as not to block the sunrise needed by the plants, and to help conserve the soil and hold water underground; how to plant trees form optimum growth; etc. These and similar pieces of knowledge are what consist TRUE SCIENCE.
As budding scientist-farmers ourselves, many detailed things we can discuss, but I leave them to some other time. The main point is our mission: SCIENCE FOR OUR AGRICULTURE’S SUSTAINABLE GROWTH, NOT AGAINST IT.
What is very sad of our present Science is that: IT DESTROYS OUR AGRICULTURE. IT AS DESTROYED THE ENVIRONMENT. IT HAS TERRIBLE DISTURBED THE HARMONY AND BALANCE OF ECOLOGY, causing each part unable to function in its assigned task in the sustenance of life in this planet! Look at the land. It is supposed to feed its population. True to God’s warning, abuse would lead to the atmosphere becoming like iron (no rain) and the ground like bronze (no productivity). And this is all because of man’s foolish meddling with Nature’s ways, altering processes ordained by the all-wise and perfect God.
We want SCIENCE FOR HEALTH AND LIFE. What is sad with today’s present science is that: Its chemical combinations or formula (formulations) have destroyed our bodies, minds and lives! It is the chemists’ chemical formulations made into medicines, vitamin supplements, fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic food, food additives, food preservatives, flavor enhancers, etc, THAT ARE TEARING OUR BODY’S CELLS APART AND CAUSING MANY OF THEM TO PRE-MATURELY DECAY (e.g., gangrene, diabetes, cancers, ulcers, etc.).
So our first mission is to make this AGRO-INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FEASIBLE FOR OUR CHILDREN. Today, our expensive and health-destructive INORGANIC METHOD OF FARMING makes farming economically unfeasible and health-wise unadvisable.
· At the top, chemical fertilizers and pesticides must be banned!
· In the bottom, the masses must be taught how to make their own organic fertilizers and pesticides from available weeds, leaves, etc.,
· And at the same time, to supplement farmers’ slow fertilizer production, the mass-production and sale of organic fertilizers by, say, those who have access to abundant raw materials such as chicken dung, etc., must be encouraged, to hasten the restoration of natural fertility.
· In the bottom, wrong practices such as weeds burning must be stopped. . Only a small quantity of weeds shall be burned to produce potassium; the greater quantity of weeds shall be composted to produce nitrogen and other important elements necessary for plant life and fruit-bearing. Compost making must be taught and learned by all.
· In short, these things and everything that can help us make up for having failed for centuries to obey God’s simple yet very important command: “Replenish the earth”! (Genesis 1:28). Replenish means to fill again, to return what was taken. For example, if as a scientist-farmer we know that we have taken from a particular lot of soil some 20 kilograms of NH3 (Nitrogen and Hydrogen = ammonia), then, by understanding God’s Natural order, we can replenish the supply of ammonia in that particular soil and make it rich again to the next planting season!
Our ignorant self-centered ancestor farmers did not replenish but allowed soil and nutrients to disappear.
At the same time, our scientists, subservient to greedy big business and more interested of tying our noses like cows so they can control us and make us subservient to buy their fertilizers, did not replenish but killed our soil!
We both need RIGHT KNOWLEDGE OR TECHNOLOGY to become right farmers and correct scientists!
As what I have pointed out, we must do everything to PREPARE OUR AGRICULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN TO MANAGE. We must totally remove all hindrances that have made our children abandon agriculture and pursue foreign-employment-oriented education.
It helps to make them realize the disadvantages of working in the cities and abroad. It also helps to remove all disadvantages associated with agriculture.
How?
By tying it up with agriculture-friendly industry. I think that agriculture + industry or agro-industry combination is more attractive to our children because industry refers to mind development, or mental talents education which you can turn into a profession (e.g., doctor) or well-paid talent (e.g., music) and later on, a great enterprise (personal business) and in the twilight of your life, an industry (after you will have taught your knowledge and imparted your talents to the young)! This means to say that at the earlier stage, while you farm, you are also a doctor or a great musician, but later on, you will serve as a teacher of your own talent to the younger generations!
The story of the music industry of Loboc is inspiring. It started with one person who worked for the Church rondalia (music choir and band) long time ago during the Spanish time in the 17th or was it 8th century. This musician taught the children note-reading, voice lessons, for individual and choir singing, etc. That was when the seed (love) of music was sown in the fertile soil of Loboc. Now, a century or two has passed and we are eye-witnesses of its beautiful fruits: the Loboc children’s choir for example is a world-class and world champion bringing both honor and money to the people of Loboc!
That is what I would like to happen with every talent God has given to each of us. It does not matter if only one person has it now. What matters is that it will be first of all developed, then, commercialized (for economic benefits of many) and then shared so that an industry will rise from that original one man’s talent. It will be like the only one seed that later, after years, became a whole vast forest. What is true with the seed and forest must also be true with the talent and industry: TALENT MUST BECOME AN INDUSTRY; AN INDUSTRY MUST BE BASED ON TALENT.
With the advent of great inventions like the computer-internet, you can work as an architect at home, connected to your clients in the cities, countryside or even abroad by your broad-band internet, but also at the same time, you have a well-developed farm, such as ORCHARD (fruit garden), flower garden, vegetable garden, rice or corn fields, -- all of these are well-arranged and beautifully done like what every good architect would wish to do!
So there your creativity and sense of beauty finds full expression, and not just in your being a designer of beautiful houses and buildings.
Our stereo-type view of farming or agriculture is the dirt, the hard toil, the smelly sweats, and the long wait. Contrast it to the white uniform in the office or the coat and tie of an engineer, the air-conditioned rooms and offices, the easy chairs, the delicious fats and the sweets desserts – all make up a lifestyle that, as we now know and have realized a little late, MAKE YOU A CANDIDATE OF CARDIOVASCULAR, DIABETIES AND CANCER DISEASES – to die young without ever enjoying the slow pace and peaceful life in the countryside, under the shade of the trees, listening to the sound of silence, or the songs of the wind, or the melodies of the birds, communing silently with the Creator and Savior of our souls, preparing our badly educated lives for the life beyond, having wasted much of our younger days in frivolities and temporary and sinful pleasures.
Our constituents are fed up with our politicians’ platform centered on concrete infrastructures. This is a good trend. They are realizing – they have been informed – that the 20% Development Fund of the province, municipalities and barangays are for DEVELOPMENT and this refers to livelihood, education, skills training, job enhancement training programs, supply of tools, equipment needed to improve work quality and quantity. Our workers are coming to know that this 20% DF is not after all for infrastructure projects (e.g., roads, bridges, buildings) especially if these do not contribute to the generation of employment, increase of income and improvement of the quality of life, liberation from slavery, poverty, sickness and foreign domination!
I am not saying that roads are totally useless. Roads help us especially those which connect farm to the market. Better roads improve our comfort and efficiency as well as safety. Selling our farm produce as well as business can be done efficiently if we have good roads. So, we need roads.
But what I am against is the over-emphasis of roads as if there is no other more – read: more! – important projects and priorities! I was informed that in Manila, they scraped out still very good concrete roads to make way for a new one! What is this foolishness?
In some barangays, still good roofs of their barangay halls were replaced with new ones. How bad in finance these men are! I am asking: Why not use that 20% DF to flatten our hills and terrace the slopes to create farm that can sustain all generations forever? That could be our lasting legacy to our children. Besides, how much families will be kept intact and protected from being a broken OFW family, because of the fertile farms you have bequeathed to your children?
I have to be frank and direct: for the past leaderships since the 1950s, the emphasis of the government is CONCRETE INFRASTRUCTURE, not human infrastructure, nor AGRO-INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE.
Result: Their concrete roads and bridges have benefited more the foreign multi-national companies who use these road and bridges more often than we do! Our leaders’ emphasis on this concrete infrastructure serve the foreigners and as we know, their pockets, more than the needs of our people.
Human infrastructure refers to whatever is necessary for the development of our people – their minds and hearts, their character, their talents, their skills, their careers or businesses and for their marriages and families.
Industrial infrastructure is akin to human infra in that industry first refers to mind development, and then, to the technology, machineries, tools, equipment associated with an industry and business.
Agricultural infrastructure is the set of facilities and knowledge to make farming easier for farmers to make farming more productive yet sustainable, not like today’s where for a time (only in the early 1960s through ‘70s) they achieved significant rice yield increase but to the sacrifice of the sustainability of farming and death of the soil fertility, thus, this has done damage to the present and future. The empirical data and documented cases supporting the finding that chemical-based farming has damaged the health and caused death of countless of farmers and consumers are there for us to see.
* * * * *
ORGANIC FARMING IS THE WAY TO GO. THAT IS THE METHOD FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE.
INTEGRATION OF FRUIT TREES, GRAINS, LIVESTOCKS, FLOWERS, EVEN HONEY BEE CULTURE – THIS IS THE WAY TO GO! This requires entrepreneurship, management.
This is already enough to make man busy all throughout his life. He does not need to rule over his fellowman. What God wanted and still wants is that we rule over creation, but treat our fellowmen our equal - as brothers; we are not to rule over them. Genesis 1:28; 1 Samuel 8; Matthew 23:8-12 & 20:25-28 with John 13:1-17 are enough proofs that GOD DOES NOT FAVOR HUMAN GOVERNMENT. HE FAVORS GOD’S KINGDOM OVER US, WHILE WE SERVE AND TREAT ONE ANOTHER AS BROTHERS AND SISTERS. HIS WILL IS NOT MAN RULING OVER HIS FELLOWMAN. HIS WILL IS FATHERHOOD [KINGSHIP] OF GOD AND BROTHERHOOD OF MEN. In God’s Kingdom, hierarchy will be removed; it will be a government of only two layers: God and man -- Father and children (Matthew 23:8-11; John 10:1-16). This is coming soon: God’s Kingdom will replace human hierarchic government.
Development of our people’s mental talents to become a profession, an expertise, an enterprise and finally, a growing industry employing many others of similar or related skills – this too is the way!
An integration of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY is the way we should go!
The present trend of our education and work which is bound to the cities, brothels and factories, making us tied or enslaved to a foreigner’s house or inside prostitution dens, without freedom, without fresh air, without the chance to sing happy songs – an education that makes us into employees and slaves especially abroad regardless of what diploma and license we have achieved, making our years of sacrifices in study useless –
this present trend of mediocrity and misery must be halted!
But we can’t stop our children from preparing to go to the cities and foreign countries – unless we can give them better and more secure alternative.
So, the exodus to the cities and foreign countries has to continue for years and the sufferings. That we can not stop. The alternative is: unemployment and hunger at home due to the demise of agriculture and the fall of our local industries due to anti-counterfeiting law and the ongoing globalization or entry of superior and cheaper foreign goods and stronger businesses.
Nay, you know about our garments industry. Right? Way back in the 1980s, it was a booming industry. In 1993, Levis’ and DTI raided these counterfeiters and destroyed over 90% of them.
Overall, by 1994 the Philippines had 13.4 millions Micro, Cottage, Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (MCSMEs). Ten years after, the 2004 figure is shocking: only 783, 923 MCSMEs left! That is according to DTI figure.
What does that mean? Only 5.8 % remained or survived. 94.2% of our MCSMEs did not survive against the entry of chemically-produced, machine-aided cheaper products from abroad.
What does that mean? DEATH OF OUR MCSMEs. DEATH OF OUR LOCAL INDUSTRIES. LOSS OF THOUSANDS OF LOCAL JOBS. MANY MORE THOUSANDS BECOME UNEMPLOYED.
What is the option of these MCSMEs or their former employees? Work abroad!
The country is bleeding because not only untalented Filipinos went to Saudi Arabia, but at the same time, very talented former entrepreneurs and professionals are being lured by rich nations like Canada, Australia, the U.S.A., the European Union!
Soon this nation will become a nation of weak, dull and ailing people – for that is what being left as a result of the fast departure of our skilled educated citizens. They are abandoning ship, so to speak. They see no hope in this country.
Nay, this leaves us to be challenged! We must collect our remaining energy and force to make this nation alive again - loved and respected!
I am enclosing here Our National Vision which I wrote a few years ago. See the Appendix A -- later. Appendix A contains 3 main articles: Our National Vision, My Vision for a National Character, and My Dream Character – all of these expressing my heart’s desire to make this nation and people great – great in love first of all, and great in wisdom and great in material blessings as well.
These 3 articles on Character depict my VISION OF EDUCATION OF THE HEART, in addition to our already discussed (Occupational) “Education for the Poor”.
For as we provide our children with education for earning their living, it is far more important for us all, children and parents, to acquire the EDUCATION OF THE HEART, that is, character. The late Herbert W. Armstrong, one of America’s great spiritual leaders who founded the Ambassador College in Pasadena, California, often spoke of “education how to earn a living and education how to live.” The first is material, the second spiritual – about relationships - character.
In Appendix A, you will have an idea of what EDUCATION OF THE HEART fully mean.
For the meantime, to close this main body of this letter, let me address one final concern that most of you, mothers, are burdened in your heart even if government schools are already cheap in tuition fees. You are still hard up with the weekly expenses for their fare, food, lodging house, etc., which at present ranges from P 250 – P 350 a week.
This is the burden that Pepe, my cousin, felt after her older sister, who supported her study in government school of CVSCAFT, died in 2002. Their parents are poor. And so when Fina died, Pepe was forced to quit. She has only 2 years left to finish her course. Sayang kaayo.
How could she finish her course? Is there a way? There are many ways but one very easy way is BÔBÔ (regular contributions) which we are very familiar of! Look, if we have bôbô for our dead relatives and neighbors, or BÔBÔ for wedding purposes, why can’t we have one for the education of our children? EDUCATION BÔBÔ or BÔBÔ PANG-ESKWELA is a wise answer to our long-time problem of educating our children. Because there was not one, most of our children could not go to college. I lament the fact that many of my very bright contemporaries and those who followed us were not able to proceed to college or to some vocational schools. Now, they are confined to manual labor – and poverty -- their minds not being used to pursue their high potentials and attain their dreams.
It is hard to understand! What is more important – or rather more beneficial: funeral, wedding or education? Which will give better jobs and income to our children and can allow them to do a lot of good things for us, their parents and relatives and others? Funeral? Wedding?
I presented this idea before our Barangay Council and used the case of Pepe. I told them that in our sitio, there are 30 men who are uncles and grandfathers and relatives of Pepe. Simply divide P 300 by 30 and you’ll have P 10.00 each, for each week.
Even for a very poor man who earns P 100.00 a day or even a farmer who generates P 100.00 a week, food and viand sourced mainly from the farm, P10.00 is easily affordable! They could easily afford more than P 10.00 for their gambling, liquor, and cigarettes!
“When did Pepe quit?” I asked my aunt who is a member of our Barangay Council.
“She quit in 2002,” came back the answer, with a hum and then a noise from the rest of the Council, which I understood and confirmed by ending my presentation with the following words: “Oh, yes, Pepe would have been professional now!”
“Bitaw no?” I overheard them say.
Today is year 2007.
Now, I also want you to put down this letter and go to your work imagining the advantages and blessings of children being supported by their relatives and neighbors in their barangay. What flood of gratitude would possibly flow? I leave it to you to keep musing.
Do you now have an idea how wonderful and how easy life is if we feel, think, plan, act and do according to the Love-Law of God “You shall love Jehovah your Father above all and your neighbor as yourself”? In the Bible, to love the Father is done by helping the poor. “Whatever you would do to the least [poorest] of these poor brothers of Mine, you did it to Me and for Me,” Jesus said in behalf of the Father.
So, loving the poor is one way we are able to express our grateful love for God and pay God’s love for us.
“He who loves the Father, also consequently loves His children,” says the Apostle John in his First Epistle, chapter 5, verse 1.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my thoughts. And do not worry, my plan to increase the income of men (fathers and husbands) in our community will redound to their ability to educate your children, whether they would do it individually or collectively.
God the Father bless you!
Lovingly your friend and brother in God’s Big Family,
Cocoy
Sunday, April 15, 2007
TWO BASIC RESOURCES
TWO BASIC RESOURCES
By: Arnulfo ‘Cocoy’ Yu Laniba
Agape Foundation (Agasoft)
Email: cocoy777@yahoo.com
By: Arnulfo ‘Cocoy’ Yu Laniba
Agape Foundation (Agasoft)
Email: cocoy777@yahoo.com
We have two available basic resources: mind and land.
Mind must develop its talent into hobby (for pleasure & honing), then, employment (for experience & sharpening) then into self-employment (without employer) and then business (personal/family) and industry (taking the role of a teacher, sharing his talents through training and nurturing his same-talent juniors).
For food, the Land must be cultivated for grain fields. For capital (source of funds for talent development & later, business capital), portion of the Land must be developed into orchard in addition to grain fields.
If we can still maximize our abandoned fields and farms and turn them into orchards to produce P375,000.00 a year per 15 mango trees (that is, some P30,000.00 a month), then, why hesitate doing that? Why won’t our OFWs invest in this? Fifteen mango trees will not take much bigger than 1,000 square meters of land, I estimate, which most families in the country today owns! But the ideal space for 15 mangoes, according to agriculturists, is half a hectare in a 10 to 15 meters distance between trees. What family can remain poor if it earns P30,000.00 a month? P30,000.00 a month is a manager’s salary! More than the salary of most mayors! That’s my personal estimate. The Cebu agriculturists’ estimate is much more reliable and realistic because it is based on actual experience of the Cebu mango growers.
Basing on the experience of the Cebuanos, you can have a yearly income of P5,625.00 from 15 mango trees in the 6th to 7th year after planting. At the 15th year, you will have P17,000.00 a year. At 20th year, you will have P39,469.00 a year. At 30th, you will have P158,339.70 – a year. At 40th year, P253,090.95!
You will start being able to survive from your orchard at year 20 which will yield you some P3,289.00 a month. If you planted the mangoes in your 30th birthday, then, you will experience this P3,289.00 a month income when you will be 50 years old. That is bigger than most pensions!
If you supplement it with vegetables, rice or corn, cows and goats and chicken, then, you will surely survive in the rural.
I am now 39 years old and my more than 15 mangoes are on their 12th year. They will be 20 years old when I will be 47 years old! Our five children will be 19, 17, 15, 13, and 10 at that time.
If I will send them to college, one will be finished at that time. The second will be still in college. The other two will be in high school. The youngest will be in the elementary.
Our UP-lecturer told us he is in his late 50s and still suffer to support his children in college. A wiser plan is to LET OUR CHILDREN GET OR ACQUIRE AN EDUCATION OR SKILL AT LEAST EQUIVALENT TO COLLEGE OR EVEN MORE THAN IT BY TURNING THEM INTO ENTREPRENEURS OF THEIR OWN TALENTS AND SKILLS and so send them to formal school up to high school only.
Result: Enjoying ‘retirement from big education expenses’ is possible for us, their parents, at the same time, our children will have speeded up to become earners far ahead their contemporaries. Also, together, parents and children can work for their orchard and for their talents and businesses, as well as personal and spiritual growth!
So, early retirement is feasible. This ‘retirement’ means the withdrawal from city-based works especially if such work is not your talent, shift to agriculture and the pursuit of your talents and above spiritual development. “Retirement” does not mean inactivity; rather, it is heightened activity but one which is suited to what you love doing; it is work still but finally with joy and love!
This early retirement will mean a combination of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY (talent development, utilization and its entrepreneurization). If you opt to stay ‘incomeless’ aside from your mangoes’ income, and just concentrate on your hobbies, and spiritual studies for example, well, it will be up to you.
This whole integrated AGRO-INDUSTRIAL formula I am sharing to you is my own experience. Not to say that I have already at the tip of success, no I’m still on the way to success. But you need not dismiss this my humble suggestion (formula) merely because I have not reached the end, because I have not depended on my own exclusive experience – I AM MERELY FOLLOWING THE PATH THAT OTHERS, ALBEIT ONLY A FEW HAVE ALREADY TAKEN AND PROVEN!
The only risk or change that we will need to look at to is: WILL WE BE ABLE TO HAVE THE SAME HARVEST IF WE WILL NOT USE THEIR RECOMMENDED CHEMICALS, that is, if we will solely depend on organic methods? My answer: those who have used 100% organic system in rice (e.g., SRI system) have harvested two to three times greater (240 to 360 sacks a hectare) than what commercial fertilizers could achieve (only 120 sacks a hectare). Corn in Cebu has attained 5 to 10 ears per plant using mainly organic fertilizers, instead of the traditional 1 or 2 ears per plant.
You will experience the big break at the 30th year of your mangoes, when your mangoes will give you a whopping P158,339.70 – a year! For that is P 13,194.98 a month! When your mangoes reach jubilee (50th birthday), P 369,164.70 will be the annual income, or a monthly income of P30,763.73. That’s an executive’s salary! A rich man’s income already!
At 60th, the half a million peso mark is passed!
Yes, by only 15 mango trees!
These estimates constituted 70% of all fruits, where 30% are considered not for the market.
Take note that these 15 mango trees should be planted on a half an hectare lot. For the ideal number of mango trees in a hectare is 30. Take note also that the buying price is put initially at P0.75 per fruit on ‘corridas’ basis with a successive 10% yearly rise.[1]
Let us go back and finally realize, brothers, that GOD WANTS US TO DETERMINE WHICH IS MORE REALIABLE AS “FUTURE SECURITY”: the OFW-employment or creating our own diamond fields right in our own home and backyard? The SSS or the mango tree? The GSIS or the mango trees? The CAP or the mango trees? The Pacific Plans or the mango trees? The Platinum Plans or mango trees? His trees or man’s business? He or man? He or government? “Mango tree” can also mean any other profitable and above all, enduring fruit trees.
In the face of our economic crisis where giants [e.g., Levi’s, Worldcom, CAP, SSS, GSIS, ec.] fall one after another, may I ask: Whose system works better: God’s or man’s? Who is our security: God or ourselves?
We praised too much man’s system. We spurned God’s old ways of farming. We hated the land. We left it. We abandoned old parents! We were attracted by the glitters of materialism and the beckoning ‘lights’ of the city. Because we preferred SSS or GSIS or CAP or anything like them!I do not mean we totally abandon business or government, but we must come to realize that our rejection of farming, or our distaste of the land, due to the pride that comes from being a college or university graduate is wrong! Totally wrong! Didn’t Christ told us to “Come to Me…learn from Me… Humility and Gentleness”? But there we have gotten from schools – diploma and pride!And so we rejected land, old parents, old houses and God!
Above all, because of our rejection of God and His methods of living, we have fallen into the pit of our own making! And this crisis-pit is not going to disappear until we will have learned to acknowledge HIM. That I can guarantee us all!
Orchard or fruit farming has the potential of being able to finance a family member’s talent and career development, and business ventures, without resorting to the deadly loan sharks! Imagine how many businesses could have flourished today if these were financed by the free and interest-free income of the family orchards, instead of the loan sharks or banks that ironically drove to bankruptcy (thankfully!) what they ‘disguised’ to help.
The Philippines has a still untapped great potential of becoming the world’s producer-exporter of many different fruits that only the Philippines and a few tropical nations are very much blessed by God to grow. We can supply the rest of the world, over 150 nations to be our fruit market.
Possibilities are limitless – if we can work together! If we can realize the value of God’s gift — the land and the fruit trees!
That can solve our growing menace of prostitutions. Brethren, Let us sell fruits, not flesh! Only one is our hindrance: the sin called IMPATIENCE! Synonym: THE DESIRE TO GET-RICH-QUICK until God’s method of hard work, humility, patience and honesty is violated!
And because of that, to go back to the farm has become so difficult to do due to so much abuse of the soil and due to the tremendous time we have lost already. There is a way to catch up, but TEAMWORK BETWEEN GOVERNMENT, NGOs AND POs IS REQUIRED. Above all, not just cooperation but best of all, the initiative of the people, organized or not, is very much necessary.
If this teamwork is formed, then, I foresee that within 5 or not longer than 10 years, we can save this nation from its worsening economic woes.
**************
[1] Source brochure: Cebu Tecnoguide – Mango, by Central Visayas Technology Packaging Project, 1991
USE NEW EDUCATION & OFW CAPITAL TO URGENTLY LET AGRICULTURE CATCH UP WITH INDUSTRY
USE NEW EDUCATION & OFW CAPITAL
TO URGENTLY LET AGRICULTURE CATCH UP WITH INDUSTRY
By: Arnulfo ‘Cocoy’ Yu Laniba
Agape Foundation (Agasoft)
Email: cocoy777@yahoo.com
TO URGENTLY LET AGRICULTURE CATCH UP WITH INDUSTRY
By: Arnulfo ‘Cocoy’ Yu Laniba
Agape Foundation (Agasoft)
Email: cocoy777@yahoo.com
Wednesday, November 28, 2006, Badbad Oriental, Loon, Bohol, Philippines –
The world pays homage to the Chinese for their wise saying, “Give a man a fish and you fed him for a day, but teach a man how to fish and you will have fed him for a lifetime.” America’s consulting firms, for example, have adopted this saying as their guiding principles in nurturing business enterprises and organizations.
The world, and Filipinos in particular, will again thank the Chinese sages for quite another great saying that has shone in importance and guided training seminars all over the Philippines, to paraphrase: “If you plan for a year, plant a seed [grain]; if you plan for 10 years, plant a tree; if you plan 100 years, educate the people. By planting a seed, you reap once, by planting a tree you will reap 10fold, and by educating the people, you will reap 100fold.”
What are the lessons we can draw from this great proverb?
First, we can see three types of period: short-term or immediate, medium-term, and long-term.
Second, as we know in life, we can not neglect the first one because it refers to our daily wage or food such as grains [seed], etc: immediate or else we die immediately.
Third, AND THIS IS WHERE FILIPINOS ARE WEAK OR LACKING: foresight, vision. We have to admit we do not realize fully the benefit of planting a tree and in educating our people. Yes, we do plant trees and also send our children to school to get education. But have only grasped 5% of the value of tree planting and education and so we barely give these two tasks PRIORITY. Our priority is the need of the BODY – the material, the SHORT-TERM. The medium and long-term, especially the eternal, receive minimal attention but often usually forgotten.
Fourth, WISER NATIONS LIKE JAPAN AND GERMANY AND THE U.S.A. SAW THE FAR FUTURE AND AIM THEIR DAILY ACTIONS ALSO TO THAT FAR FUTURE AND NOT JUST ON THE IMMEDIATE. RESULT: They are able to satisfy both immediate the future, medium-and long-term. What advantage does this approach has over the “present-only” mentality of short-sighted Filipinos? To answer this, let us use the tree, both lumber and the fruit tree. We Filipinos have not realized the great value a fruit tree farm or what we call orchard could have done to us. We only concentrated on planting short-term seeds such as corn, rice grains and other root crops. We really are “for-today-only” people. The fruit trees we had grown are so few that they also serve only our “for-today-only” and our selfishness “for-ourselves only’ mentality. We have missed the point – totally missed the main point, namely; That had we or our forefathers planted say, a hectare of orchard [e.g., 30 mangoes in a hectare], that would MAKE MIRACLES HAPPEN, namely: based in experience and authoritative estimates[1], a family or now a clan with 30 mangoes would have the following income:
YEAR
GROSS INCOME OF 70% OF HARVEST
[NOTE: 30% are considered not sold to market]
10th
P 19,656.00
20th
P 78,938.00
30th
P 316,679.40
40th
P 506,181.90
50th
P 738,329.40
60th
P 1,084,482.00
If you knew that production cost would not exceed the P 7,000.00-mark, then, you will realize how much net profit you would have, as years roll by!
But what does that mean first to the planter, and then, next to his descendants?
If you planted them when you were 20 years old, then you would already be enjoying the benefits not later than in your 30th birthday and on to your 80th birthday when your 50 mango trees hit the million-mark sales!
There is no need to enumerate other benefits you can get from such CASH! Is there?
What I am more concerned about is to express my regret against our short-sighted forefathers, if only that is the way I can give vent to my sorrow: they looked after only for their own needs and neglected ours! That is why I’ve got an eroded, denuded and very poor land to farm – full of stones and no fruit tree to speak of or brag about!
Now, I am not a man who gets his full satisfaction in forever dwelling in the past and hurling blames. But I’ve got now the luxury of space and time to ATTACK THE MEMORY OF OUR MYOPIC FOREFATHERS – if that is one way I can motivate myself to abhor their practices and motivate you to take the way of the wise, such as that of Sony Corporation and other great Japanese companies that make a 250-year plan!
Their foolishness to accept the equally foolish superstition from the foolish Spaniards is one to be blamed. The Spaniard Catholic taught our naïve forefathers the superstition that mango and similar trees had power to shorten the lives of their planters. That is how these deceptive religious teachers interpreted the natural God-give capacity of these fruit trees to outlive their planters and benefit their descendants. “If you plan 10 years and want to harvest benefits beyond it,” may I rephrase the Chinese proverb, “manifold” or say, P1million after 60 years, then, plant a tree!”
Do you know that superstition was intended to cause us to be afraid of doing what was actually right and for our long-term good? The crafty Spaniards succeeded in implanting fear in our ancestors’ mind and heart and so they did not plant orchards, and so, they remained poor and sickly and therefore weak enough to remain slaves and a colonized people for over 300 years! That lead me to say, THAT IF WE ONLY PLANTED MANGOES WHE THE SPANIARDS CAME OR EVER BEFORE THEM, THEN, THEY WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO COLONIZE US, or NOT THAT LONG!
Fast forward to our time, IF WE HAD ONLY SUCH AN INHERITANCE FROM OUR RESPECTIVE GRANDFATHERS OR GREAT GRANDFATHERS, DO YOU THINK THAT P 1 MILLION A YEAR WOULD NOT HELP YOU OBTAIN THE EDUCATION YOU WANT, DEVELOP YOUR TALENTS TO THE MAXIMUM, CAPITALIZE WITHOUT LIMIT YOUR TALENT-BASED BUSINESS? Because we do not have 30 60-year-old mango trees today (or other fruit trees), we do not have the ‘free money’ for our education, development of our respective talents, capitalization of our businesses. As a matter of fact, we are being devoured by loan sharks – instead of getting rich ourselves, we become poorer due to the high interests of these loan sharks!!! Compare this to the condition where you have 30 mango trees, 60 years old each! With such a whooping amount, interest free, and not even to be repaid, and with the prospect of having the same amount every following year, DO YOU THINK YOU WILL MORE LIKELY FAIL IN YOUR LIFE AND BUSINESS?
I do not think so! Unless you are lazy. But laziness is due largely to not being able to do and pursue what you want or love, such as your hobby or talent. But by being able to focus on your talents (what you love), laziness is an impossibility.
Yes, you may prove this my statement: IN YOUR TALENT, LAZINESS IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY. For the heart is very diligent where it loves. If it loves music, then, it is very diligent.
So, the key to solve or overcome laziness, is to simply put the child or individual in where his heart loves! Another way of saying, simply awaken his dormant love. If you can do that, then, you can at the same time remove that man’s laziness.
Filipinos are known to be lazy. Even the late President Manuel L. Quezon once said: “Filipinos are not hard-working.”
The cause is the lack of love or the suppression of love. Aside from the evil group of greed, lust, pride, envy, hatred, revenge, the Love-group (e.g., compassion, mercy, kindness, sympathy, kindness, appreciation and the like) is the only worthwhile motivation. If you can awaken or put more love in his heart, then, the Filipino is at par with the most diligent man on earth! That’s for sure!
* * * * *
A few weeks ago, our Municipal Agriculture Office and the Office of the Mayor invited all 67 barangays in our town, Loon, to recruit one participant for the November 2006 – March 2007 Farmer Scientists Training Program (FSTP).
One qualification was that the participant-students should be 55 years old and below.
Here are the results:
Only 42 out of 67 complied and were able to send participants;
It was estimated that around 15 participants lied to be 55 years old and below; they were actually older than 55 years old;
A few younger participants have lands but are no longer presently farming them
What do these findings mean?
It means that only 27 or 40% barangays have farmers who are 55 years old and below
40 barangays or 60% have no more young farmers, aging 55 and below
What is more alarming is that these 27 barangays that have sent their 55-year-old-and-below have had difficulty finding at least one such farmer!? That is, they almost have no more young farmers!?
Age disqualification is the main reason for the other barangays’ failure to send a representative. The tuition is free. Lunch is free. Classes are only done on Tuesdays for 18 consecutive weeks. Transportation and ‘appearance’ stipend are given. Coastal barangays still have farms. Even writing supplies were supplied by the MAO. So, there seems to be no reason why a barangay could not send at least one participant.
So the conclusion that THERE SEEMS TO BE NO LONGER YOUNG FARMERS is true.
This statistic serves as a confirmation of an already on-going known fact and phenomenon in every barangay: the youth have been abandoning farming as occupation. For decades now, young people have left to the cities to study and work. Some went abroad to work.
They had left farm and old parents behind. Others have left wives and children. Some have visited but soon went back to the cities and overseas. Most of them yearned to return home after they experienced the hard life in the cities and abroad, but could not. Some have totally forgotten and decided never to return to their former home in the rural village.
Most of the farmers left in the barangays are over 55 years old. Over and over again, you can interview these old grandmas and grandpas and they would tell you almost the same sigh: “What will happen when we will have passed away!”
Since my house is located beside the road, I see old farmers passing me by, while I work in my computer. There have been countless times when I stood by the road to chat with anyone of them. And they expressed their great sorrow and worry by saying: “What will happen when we are no longer around?”
Many of the few rural men left have shifted to other works, such as carpentry or construction. Most youth are studying. It seems to be good, but the education our youth are given would confine them to ‘employment’ – poor labor. The offices they are aiming for do not exist. Colleges and universities are churning out half-baked engineers, accounting graduates who can’t install accounting systems nor balance the books. There is an endless and almost infinite list of graduates waiting for ‘the office to work’ or the ‘classroom to teach’ or the ship that will hire them.
The space of the city is being congested by these migrants from the rural villages seeking employment. There seems to be no more space left in the city, while lands in the countryside become vacant, despite the fast increase of overall population.
Though education aims to cultivate the barren mind, it seems to be that our type of education has planted the plants of pride, vanity and materialism. The batch college educated Filipinos have spurned the land. They have mocked agriculture which is one of the most essential foundations of economic prosperity and stability.
Also, the salaries which this education has given our graduates are disappointing; our salaried college educated workers are not even enough for their own. Aging parents have been disappointed to have discovered that the education in which they placed their hope is a farce messiah. They are not saved from poverty after their sons and daughters graduated from college. They are instead subjected to double sorrow: their children have left them; and their children have not lifted them out of poverty.
I have to say: SOMETHING IS WRONG – VERY WRONG – WITH OUR EDUCATION. IT IS NOT LIBERATING US FROM POVERTY. IT IS INSTEAD CONFINING US TO SLAVERY! BETTER WERE OUR FOREFATHERS WHO WERE FREE IN THEIR FARMS!
But now, how can we go back to the farm? We have two very difficult obstacles: 1) our education or mental skill or knowledge is not about agriculture; we do not fit to the farm; 2) our land, long time abandoned and long time abused with chemicals (e.g., fertilizers and pesticides) and logging (forest destruction), has lost its ecology or capacity to grow food, has lost its ability to feed and sustain us!
MISCULTIVATED MIND
Our agriculture-lecturers repeatedly told us: There is no barren land, only barren mind.
This is surely true. And this statement is surely aimed to encourage us to go back to the farm and cultivate it. The saying is aimed to “insult” us so as to move us to never mind the external obstacles or causes of discouragement of farming, such as high cost of production input (e.g., labor, fertilizers, pesticides, even seeds are soon to be purchased when our native seeds are gone), very poor soil, low market prices, and not yet known to many: the high health risks of chemically-fertilized or grown or modified plants or grains.
Mental laziness and ignorance, not external factors, are the main cause of leaving the land.
I say “Yes, partly”.
There are real causes that discourage our sons and daughters from farming:
First, is mental-emotional cause – read: attitudes -- values.
I see it is the attraction of the city – read: materialism and its related personal beautification – that made us lazy to farm. It is the low esteem attached to being a farmer – the dirty hands, the bad ‘sweat’ odor, the rancid clothes, the wrinkles, the sun-burned skin, the lack of sophistication, the absence of appliances at home, the loneliness in the farm versus the sounds and the attractions of the city – these are discouraging our modern sons and daughters from going to farm.
City and education are still connected to rich and luxury; whereas, farming, except to large modernized ones, has become synonymous to sufferings, poverty, and deprivation of the joys, pleasures, and leisure of life that they enjoy in the cities.
Even the few women who were born in the farm, grew, married and left to the farm have this secret longing to live a life of luxury that the city and college education have offered. But I overheard them say, “What could we do but resign to our fate?”
But not many of today’s younger generation accept that. They are seeing a way out. They consider college education as a way to escape poverty in the mountain village and to enjoy life in the city.
But those of us from the province (promdis) who went to the city or have gone to the city have found out that: CITY PROMISES WERE MOSTLY ILLUSIORY!
· What the city calls ‘happiness’, ‘pleasure’ and ‘leisure’ are not really joy;
· Most of the city-based workers are imprisoned in a kind of works where they do not grow, are imprisoned or where they are misfits and find no happiness; they just do it to survive;
· While working life in the city is a struggle, retirement is worse! If you continue to stay as an old man in the city, then chances are that you are a dead while still alive. For there is no worse thing to ever happen to a retiring man and find no place of quiet and serenity that only a rural setting can provide! If during our working life, we did not have time for God, how unfortunate and cursed we are to find no time and no quiet place to spend our sunset years in useful meditation, self-introspection and in communion with the higher power!
So our challenge today is HOW TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE IN THE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE WHERE MOST OF US CAME FROM.
First to change is our attitude from hating the farm to loving it. But thankfully, there are still many of us who still love the farm and long for it. Their bad experience in the city or their bad findings and conclusions about the city and modern education and living, especially the more they get older, is intensifying their longing to go back to the farm from where they came.
If this is so – that is, if the right attitude towards the farm has been restored at least among the more mature ones who are still in the cities, then, one thing we can do is: INSTITUTIONALIZE OR PERFECT THE SYSTEM OF BRINGING THEM BACK TO THE FARM!
How?
I have at least four ways:
First, ALLOCATE AT LEAST 10 YEARS OF “RESTORING THE CAPACITY OF OUR LAND OR FARM TO FEED US”
Second, THIS MEANS TOTAL ABANDONMENT OF CHEMICALS – be they fertilizers and pesticides, flower inducers, weeds killers, etc. These chemicals are killing us softly and now speedily. Commercial fertilizers, for example, produce a deadly by-product called nitrosamines which is the most dreaded cause of cancers today. Increasing findings show that the breasts, milk and wombs of our women contain nitrosamines, pesticides which give us at least a hint as to the cause of the increasing cases of breast cancer, cervix cancer among our women and cancers among our small children!
Third, THIS MEANS TOTAL RETURN TO NATURAL, ORGANIC METHODS – a restoration of ecology, the whole integrated system of co-operation of plants, animals, man and nature in producing food!
Fourth, SPEND MUCH OF YOUR CITY-INCOME OR SALARIES TO
1) RESTORE THE NATURAL FERTILITY OF YOUR LAND’S SOIL. This is not so expensive if you focus on (1) farm ‘paril’ to prevent further soil erosion; (2) import soil from the valleys to which your former soil have gone or been washed away; re-fill your eroded farm; (3) lots of compost pits most preferably on the uppermost portion of your land to let fertile juice from the compost pits flow into the lower portions of your land; you may also place compost pits in different locations inside your farm. 1-2-meter deep will do. As to the width and length, you determine it to hold as many materials for composting as possible. The bigger the better; (4) if you don’t like pits, then, you can directly bury the weeds in the soil; but, this may be too laborious and therefore, expensive, howbeit equally or even more effective; (5) VERY IMPORTANT: Except on purpose to ‘smoke’ your fruit trees to induce fruiting or assist fruiting, NEVER BURN LEAVES OR WEEDS – make them your main material for compost natural fertilizer; (6) if you can finance the raising of poultry or livestock such as cows and goats, do so, not just for the meat or income you can derive but also for their dung to help make organic fertilizers.
2) PREPARE YOUR LAND, e.g., plant fertility-restoring trees or plants such as madre cacao, ipil-ipil from which you can get very ‘nutritious’ leaves to help make compost natural fertilizer; Napier grasses for your livestock; etc. Let your madre cacao or ipil-ipil also serve as your future fence for your goats or cows. The Napier grasses shall serve as feeds for your livestock.
3) SPEND MUCH OF YOUR PRESENT INCOME IN ENSURING A LONG-TERM PRODUCTIVITY OF YOUR LAND-FARM. The best suggestion is: Orchard or fruit trees farm, say, mango farm to be sooner or later integrated with livestock (e.g., VISION: ONE COW PER MANGO TREE), honeybee culture, poultry, etc. Another good suggestion is for barren portions to be planted with lumber trees – for your housing needs, for income, for production of fresh oxygen and many other benefits of a wooded place. Yes, you have to budget for a caretaker. If you still have farming parents, then, you are fortunate. They can provide the necessary labor or supervision to ensure that your orchard is take care of regularly, such as regular clean-up and fertilizing. A lot of compost pits is also recommended to hold the fertile weeds and leaves. You will spend only once for the digging of pits.
Basing on the experience of the Cebuanos, you can have a yearly income of P5,625.00 from 15 mango trees in th3 6th to 7th year after planting. At the 15th year, you will have P17,000.00 a year. At 20th year, you will have P39,469.00 a year. At 30th, you will have P158,339.70 – a year. At 40th year, P253,090.95!
You will start being able to survive from your orchard at year 20 which will yield you some P3,289.00 a month. If you planted the mangoes in your 30th birthday, then, you will experience this P3,289.00 a month income when you will be 50 years old. That is bigger than most pensions!
If you supplement it with vegetables, rice or corn, cows and goats and chicken, then, you will surely survive in the rural.
I am now 39 years old and my more than 15 mangoes are on their 12th year. They will be 20 years old when I will be 47 years old! Our five children will be 19, 17, 15, 13, and 10 at that time.
If I will send them to college, one will be finished at that time. The second will be still in college. The other two will be in high school. The youngest will be in the elementary.
Our UP-lecturer told us he is in his late 50s and still suffer to support his children in college. A wiser plan is to LET OUR CHILDREN GET OR ACQUIRE AN EDUCATION OR SKILL AT LEAST EQUIVALENT TO COLLEGE OR EVEN MORE THAN IT BY TURNING THEM INTO ENTREPRENEURS OF THEIR OWN TALENTS AND SKILLS and so send them to formal school up to high school only.
Result: Enjoying ‘retirement from big education expenses’ is possible for us, their parents, at the same time, our children will have speeded up to become earners far ahead their contemporaries. Also, together, parents and children can work for their orchard and for their talents and businesses, as well as personal and spiritual growth!
If college education be a necessity to become a qualified engineer, for example, then, the effective team-work “the older will support his/her next younger only” can help easen up parents’ load and at the same time, increase the bond of the children because they help one another. I know a couple, who have 10 children, had done this. Their children are now professionals using the formula. It came out that as far as educating is concerned, the parents were as if only having one child! For they only educated their eldest. The rest were educated or supported by their older brother or sister!
So, number of children is not a question if you are wise. Added to that: if you have made LOVE as the main basis of your marriage and family.
So early retirement is feasible. This ‘retirement’ means the withdrawal from city-based works especially if such work is not your talent, shift to agriculture and the pursuit of your talents and above spiritual development. “Retirement” does not mean inactivity; rather, it is heightened activity but one which is suited to what you love doing; it is work still but finally with joy and love!
This early retirement will mean a combination of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY (talent development, utilization and its entrepreneurization). If you opt to stay ‘incomeless’ aside from your mangoes’ income, and just concentrate on your hobbies, and spiritual studies for example, well, it will be up to you.
Much better if you have your talents made ‘cashable’ already. In my case, I am a fledgling book author – not that I have a lack of ideas or topics to write but more so on lack of capital to publish my books. My wife has a better-income-generating skill of cake baking. She is presently manning our small family bakery.
This whole integrated AGRO-INDUSTRIAL formula I am sharing to you is my own experience. Not to say that I have already at the tip of success, no I’m still on the way to success. But you need not dismiss this my humble suggestion (formula) merely because I have not reached the end, because I have not depended on my own exclusive experience – I AM MERELY FOLLOWING THE PATH THAT OTHERS, ALBEIT ONLY A FEW HAVE ALREADY TAKEN AND PROVEN!
The only risk or change that we will need to look at to is: WILL WE BE ABLE TO HAVE THE SAME HARVEST IF WE WILL NOT USE THEIR RECOMMENDED CHEMICALS, that is, if we will solely depend on organic methods? My answer: those who have used 100% organic system in rice (e.g., SRI system) have harvested two to three times greater (240 to 360 sacks a hectare) than what commercial fertilizers could achieve (only 120 sacks a hectare).
You will experience the big break at the 30th year of your mangoes, when your mangoes will give you a whopping P158,339.70 – a year! For that is P 13,194.98 a month! When your mangoes reach jubilee (50th birthday), P 369,164.70 will be the annual income, or a monthly income of P30,763.73. That’s an executive’s salary! A rich man’s income already!
At 60th, the half a million peso mark is passed!
Yes, by only 15 mango trees!
These estimates constituted 70% of all fruits, where 30% are considered not for the market.
Take note that these 15 mango trees should be planted on a half an hectare lot. For the ideal number of mango trees in a hectare is 30. Take note also that the buying price is put initially at P0.75 per fruit on ‘corridas’ basis with a successive 10% yearly rise.[2]
DISABLED LAND
No matter how much they will force us and say “There is only barren mind, not barren land”, reality still discourages.
I had started trying to live in the countryside since 1996 with my family. And I say that my mind is far from being barren. I have the most cultivated and intelligent mind you can find, not to brag. I graduated as valedictorian both elementary and high school and with high honors in my computer course, and worked as corporate planner and strategist in a big corporation which sent me to Manila to undergo special courses and trainings a number of times, plus countless of ‘state-side’ business books and magazines which I bought for the company, read and studied for 4 years, acquiring the knowledge more than any university can offer, and added to that: another 13 years of business and community development.
My present condition: WE GOT 95% OF OUR INCOME FROM OUR MENTAL-BUSINESS KNOWHOW, not yet from agriculture, e.g., orchard. The orchard shall rise like a morning star as soon as we reach our life’s sunset.
Our land has been admittedly made DISABLED by CHEMICALS, that is, fertilizers, pesticides, flower inducers, etc. Its present inability to sustain is in reality making us discourage to go back to farming or to depend on it for our survival.
For the ancient natural fertility of our soil has been destroyed by the chemicals as well as the continuing soil erosion due to the destruction of forest and flooding.
I insist that my mind is not barren; but it is miseducated in so far as I am not educated to do agriculture. My mind is misfit in this agriculture place. I am ignorant agriculture knowledge. So, this mind of agricultural ignorance must be turned into a mind that possesses sufficient knowledge in agriculture in order to be able to make the land productive and profitable, if not immediately but surely in the long run – in just the right time before we pass this world away!
The rest of the blessings of our planning and efforts will be for our children, when we will no longer be around!
So, their proverb must be interpreted as: “REFORMAT YOUR MISFITTEDLY WELL-EDUCATED MIND OR ADD TO IT BASIC WORKABLE KNOWLEDGE IN AGRICULTURE SO THAT YOU CAN TURN YOUR NOW BARREN LAND INTO AN OASIS OF LOVE AND LIFE AS WELL AS A WELLSPRING OF PEACE, JOY AND FREEDOM IN GREAT ABUNDANCE.”
BACK UP THE INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS
If you are an OFW or a businessman, it is of great urgency that you will give deeper thought and consideration to what I have been writing here. It is time to think about it while you still have the money to help you finance the transformation of your barren land into the oasis and wellspring that you dreamed of. A kind of paradise.
Do not continue wasting your money in materialistic spending which you will regret later, and can do nothing anymore to recover those lost money. These materialistic spending refers to those which will not give you real long-term benefits. Many of those you eat or allow your family to eat will not only have no long-term benefits but will also give you future headaches when they will cause you cancers, cardio-vascular diseases, diabetes, etc. Think of it.
Education of your children is a good investment. But be sure where will that education bring your children. Will it become education that enslaves or that will confine your children to mere employeeship – which is usually the modern equivalent to slavery?
Remember that our present kind and quality of education is not equivalent to decent and quality works abroad, but only is considered good for domestic helping, care giving, and miserably, prostitution! Yes, our teachers and other professionals are made prostitutes or maid-slaves abroad!
What kind of educational system is this? – which ‘turned’ our professionals or degree holder into slaves, maids, and prostitutes?
Where is the respect a college diploma is said to deserve?
Where are the decent jobs equivalent to our college courses?
A SPEEDY RESTORATION OF OUR FARM AND VILLAGES IS IN ORDER!
This calls the ACTION AND ALLOCATION OF OUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNITS (LGUs). Funds must also be sourced from the national government in order to hasten the agricultural restoration in our villages. Both the National Government and the LGUs must slow down its addiction to concrete-infrastructural projects and make a poll vault in the agricultural arena.
New farms must be created or old ones improved by carving out of the mountain slopes and tops terraces to prevent further erosion and to give way for soil refilling and fattening.
LGU and NG support for the long-term and lasting refertilization of the soil, land preparation, orchard planting, livestock raising, honeybee culture, etc. shall be maximized!
Guidance and support from expert NGOs and foundations are also needed. Also from the churches and schools and media.
Every institution must be involved. Every one.
Godspeed Every one!
---------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Mango planters in Cebu, as their experience were recorded in the publication “Cebu Tecnoguide – Mango, by Central Visayas Technology Packaging Project, 1991
[2] Source brochure: Cebu Tecnoguide – Mango, by Central Visayas Technology Packaging Project, 1991
YEAR
GROSS INCOME OF 70% OF HARVEST
[NOTE: 30% are considered not sold to market]
10th
P 19,656.00
20th
P 78,938.00
30th
P 316,679.40
40th
P 506,181.90
50th
P 738,329.40
60th
P 1,084,482.00
If you knew that production cost would not exceed the P 7,000.00-mark, then, you will realize how much net profit you would have, as years roll by!
But what does that mean first to the planter, and then, next to his descendants?
If you planted them when you were 20 years old, then you would already be enjoying the benefits not later than in your 30th birthday and on to your 80th birthday when your 50 mango trees hit the million-mark sales!
There is no need to enumerate other benefits you can get from such CASH! Is there?
What I am more concerned about is to express my regret against our short-sighted forefathers, if only that is the way I can give vent to my sorrow: they looked after only for their own needs and neglected ours! That is why I’ve got an eroded, denuded and very poor land to farm – full of stones and no fruit tree to speak of or brag about!
Now, I am not a man who gets his full satisfaction in forever dwelling in the past and hurling blames. But I’ve got now the luxury of space and time to ATTACK THE MEMORY OF OUR MYOPIC FOREFATHERS – if that is one way I can motivate myself to abhor their practices and motivate you to take the way of the wise, such as that of Sony Corporation and other great Japanese companies that make a 250-year plan!
Their foolishness to accept the equally foolish superstition from the foolish Spaniards is one to be blamed. The Spaniard Catholic taught our naïve forefathers the superstition that mango and similar trees had power to shorten the lives of their planters. That is how these deceptive religious teachers interpreted the natural God-give capacity of these fruit trees to outlive their planters and benefit their descendants. “If you plan 10 years and want to harvest benefits beyond it,” may I rephrase the Chinese proverb, “manifold” or say, P1million after 60 years, then, plant a tree!”
Do you know that superstition was intended to cause us to be afraid of doing what was actually right and for our long-term good? The crafty Spaniards succeeded in implanting fear in our ancestors’ mind and heart and so they did not plant orchards, and so, they remained poor and sickly and therefore weak enough to remain slaves and a colonized people for over 300 years! That lead me to say, THAT IF WE ONLY PLANTED MANGOES WHE THE SPANIARDS CAME OR EVER BEFORE THEM, THEN, THEY WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO COLONIZE US, or NOT THAT LONG!
Fast forward to our time, IF WE HAD ONLY SUCH AN INHERITANCE FROM OUR RESPECTIVE GRANDFATHERS OR GREAT GRANDFATHERS, DO YOU THINK THAT P 1 MILLION A YEAR WOULD NOT HELP YOU OBTAIN THE EDUCATION YOU WANT, DEVELOP YOUR TALENTS TO THE MAXIMUM, CAPITALIZE WITHOUT LIMIT YOUR TALENT-BASED BUSINESS? Because we do not have 30 60-year-old mango trees today (or other fruit trees), we do not have the ‘free money’ for our education, development of our respective talents, capitalization of our businesses. As a matter of fact, we are being devoured by loan sharks – instead of getting rich ourselves, we become poorer due to the high interests of these loan sharks!!! Compare this to the condition where you have 30 mango trees, 60 years old each! With such a whooping amount, interest free, and not even to be repaid, and with the prospect of having the same amount every following year, DO YOU THINK YOU WILL MORE LIKELY FAIL IN YOUR LIFE AND BUSINESS?
I do not think so! Unless you are lazy. But laziness is due largely to not being able to do and pursue what you want or love, such as your hobby or talent. But by being able to focus on your talents (what you love), laziness is an impossibility.
Yes, you may prove this my statement: IN YOUR TALENT, LAZINESS IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY. For the heart is very diligent where it loves. If it loves music, then, it is very diligent.
So, the key to solve or overcome laziness, is to simply put the child or individual in where his heart loves! Another way of saying, simply awaken his dormant love. If you can do that, then, you can at the same time remove that man’s laziness.
Filipinos are known to be lazy. Even the late President Manuel L. Quezon once said: “Filipinos are not hard-working.”
The cause is the lack of love or the suppression of love. Aside from the evil group of greed, lust, pride, envy, hatred, revenge, the Love-group (e.g., compassion, mercy, kindness, sympathy, kindness, appreciation and the like) is the only worthwhile motivation. If you can awaken or put more love in his heart, then, the Filipino is at par with the most diligent man on earth! That’s for sure!
* * * * *
A few weeks ago, our Municipal Agriculture Office and the Office of the Mayor invited all 67 barangays in our town, Loon, to recruit one participant for the November 2006 – March 2007 Farmer Scientists Training Program (FSTP).
One qualification was that the participant-students should be 55 years old and below.
Here are the results:
Only 42 out of 67 complied and were able to send participants;
It was estimated that around 15 participants lied to be 55 years old and below; they were actually older than 55 years old;
A few younger participants have lands but are no longer presently farming them
What do these findings mean?
It means that only 27 or 40% barangays have farmers who are 55 years old and below
40 barangays or 60% have no more young farmers, aging 55 and below
What is more alarming is that these 27 barangays that have sent their 55-year-old-and-below have had difficulty finding at least one such farmer!? That is, they almost have no more young farmers!?
Age disqualification is the main reason for the other barangays’ failure to send a representative. The tuition is free. Lunch is free. Classes are only done on Tuesdays for 18 consecutive weeks. Transportation and ‘appearance’ stipend are given. Coastal barangays still have farms. Even writing supplies were supplied by the MAO. So, there seems to be no reason why a barangay could not send at least one participant.
So the conclusion that THERE SEEMS TO BE NO LONGER YOUNG FARMERS is true.
This statistic serves as a confirmation of an already on-going known fact and phenomenon in every barangay: the youth have been abandoning farming as occupation. For decades now, young people have left to the cities to study and work. Some went abroad to work.
They had left farm and old parents behind. Others have left wives and children. Some have visited but soon went back to the cities and overseas. Most of them yearned to return home after they experienced the hard life in the cities and abroad, but could not. Some have totally forgotten and decided never to return to their former home in the rural village.
Most of the farmers left in the barangays are over 55 years old. Over and over again, you can interview these old grandmas and grandpas and they would tell you almost the same sigh: “What will happen when we will have passed away!”
Since my house is located beside the road, I see old farmers passing me by, while I work in my computer. There have been countless times when I stood by the road to chat with anyone of them. And they expressed their great sorrow and worry by saying: “What will happen when we are no longer around?”
Many of the few rural men left have shifted to other works, such as carpentry or construction. Most youth are studying. It seems to be good, but the education our youth are given would confine them to ‘employment’ – poor labor. The offices they are aiming for do not exist. Colleges and universities are churning out half-baked engineers, accounting graduates who can’t install accounting systems nor balance the books. There is an endless and almost infinite list of graduates waiting for ‘the office to work’ or the ‘classroom to teach’ or the ship that will hire them.
The space of the city is being congested by these migrants from the rural villages seeking employment. There seems to be no more space left in the city, while lands in the countryside become vacant, despite the fast increase of overall population.
Though education aims to cultivate the barren mind, it seems to be that our type of education has planted the plants of pride, vanity and materialism. The batch college educated Filipinos have spurned the land. They have mocked agriculture which is one of the most essential foundations of economic prosperity and stability.
Also, the salaries which this education has given our graduates are disappointing; our salaried college educated workers are not even enough for their own. Aging parents have been disappointed to have discovered that the education in which they placed their hope is a farce messiah. They are not saved from poverty after their sons and daughters graduated from college. They are instead subjected to double sorrow: their children have left them; and their children have not lifted them out of poverty.
I have to say: SOMETHING IS WRONG – VERY WRONG – WITH OUR EDUCATION. IT IS NOT LIBERATING US FROM POVERTY. IT IS INSTEAD CONFINING US TO SLAVERY! BETTER WERE OUR FOREFATHERS WHO WERE FREE IN THEIR FARMS!
But now, how can we go back to the farm? We have two very difficult obstacles: 1) our education or mental skill or knowledge is not about agriculture; we do not fit to the farm; 2) our land, long time abandoned and long time abused with chemicals (e.g., fertilizers and pesticides) and logging (forest destruction), has lost its ecology or capacity to grow food, has lost its ability to feed and sustain us!
MISCULTIVATED MIND
Our agriculture-lecturers repeatedly told us: There is no barren land, only barren mind.
This is surely true. And this statement is surely aimed to encourage us to go back to the farm and cultivate it. The saying is aimed to “insult” us so as to move us to never mind the external obstacles or causes of discouragement of farming, such as high cost of production input (e.g., labor, fertilizers, pesticides, even seeds are soon to be purchased when our native seeds are gone), very poor soil, low market prices, and not yet known to many: the high health risks of chemically-fertilized or grown or modified plants or grains.
Mental laziness and ignorance, not external factors, are the main cause of leaving the land.
I say “Yes, partly”.
There are real causes that discourage our sons and daughters from farming:
First, is mental-emotional cause – read: attitudes -- values.
I see it is the attraction of the city – read: materialism and its related personal beautification – that made us lazy to farm. It is the low esteem attached to being a farmer – the dirty hands, the bad ‘sweat’ odor, the rancid clothes, the wrinkles, the sun-burned skin, the lack of sophistication, the absence of appliances at home, the loneliness in the farm versus the sounds and the attractions of the city – these are discouraging our modern sons and daughters from going to farm.
City and education are still connected to rich and luxury; whereas, farming, except to large modernized ones, has become synonymous to sufferings, poverty, and deprivation of the joys, pleasures, and leisure of life that they enjoy in the cities.
Even the few women who were born in the farm, grew, married and left to the farm have this secret longing to live a life of luxury that the city and college education have offered. But I overheard them say, “What could we do but resign to our fate?”
But not many of today’s younger generation accept that. They are seeing a way out. They consider college education as a way to escape poverty in the mountain village and to enjoy life in the city.
But those of us from the province (promdis) who went to the city or have gone to the city have found out that: CITY PROMISES WERE MOSTLY ILLUSIORY!
· What the city calls ‘happiness’, ‘pleasure’ and ‘leisure’ are not really joy;
· Most of the city-based workers are imprisoned in a kind of works where they do not grow, are imprisoned or where they are misfits and find no happiness; they just do it to survive;
· While working life in the city is a struggle, retirement is worse! If you continue to stay as an old man in the city, then chances are that you are a dead while still alive. For there is no worse thing to ever happen to a retiring man and find no place of quiet and serenity that only a rural setting can provide! If during our working life, we did not have time for God, how unfortunate and cursed we are to find no time and no quiet place to spend our sunset years in useful meditation, self-introspection and in communion with the higher power!
So our challenge today is HOW TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE IN THE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE WHERE MOST OF US CAME FROM.
First to change is our attitude from hating the farm to loving it. But thankfully, there are still many of us who still love the farm and long for it. Their bad experience in the city or their bad findings and conclusions about the city and modern education and living, especially the more they get older, is intensifying their longing to go back to the farm from where they came.
If this is so – that is, if the right attitude towards the farm has been restored at least among the more mature ones who are still in the cities, then, one thing we can do is: INSTITUTIONALIZE OR PERFECT THE SYSTEM OF BRINGING THEM BACK TO THE FARM!
How?
I have at least four ways:
First, ALLOCATE AT LEAST 10 YEARS OF “RESTORING THE CAPACITY OF OUR LAND OR FARM TO FEED US”
Second, THIS MEANS TOTAL ABANDONMENT OF CHEMICALS – be they fertilizers and pesticides, flower inducers, weeds killers, etc. These chemicals are killing us softly and now speedily. Commercial fertilizers, for example, produce a deadly by-product called nitrosamines which is the most dreaded cause of cancers today. Increasing findings show that the breasts, milk and wombs of our women contain nitrosamines, pesticides which give us at least a hint as to the cause of the increasing cases of breast cancer, cervix cancer among our women and cancers among our small children!
Third, THIS MEANS TOTAL RETURN TO NATURAL, ORGANIC METHODS – a restoration of ecology, the whole integrated system of co-operation of plants, animals, man and nature in producing food!
Fourth, SPEND MUCH OF YOUR CITY-INCOME OR SALARIES TO
1) RESTORE THE NATURAL FERTILITY OF YOUR LAND’S SOIL. This is not so expensive if you focus on (1) farm ‘paril’ to prevent further soil erosion; (2) import soil from the valleys to which your former soil have gone or been washed away; re-fill your eroded farm; (3) lots of compost pits most preferably on the uppermost portion of your land to let fertile juice from the compost pits flow into the lower portions of your land; you may also place compost pits in different locations inside your farm. 1-2-meter deep will do. As to the width and length, you determine it to hold as many materials for composting as possible. The bigger the better; (4) if you don’t like pits, then, you can directly bury the weeds in the soil; but, this may be too laborious and therefore, expensive, howbeit equally or even more effective; (5) VERY IMPORTANT: Except on purpose to ‘smoke’ your fruit trees to induce fruiting or assist fruiting, NEVER BURN LEAVES OR WEEDS – make them your main material for compost natural fertilizer; (6) if you can finance the raising of poultry or livestock such as cows and goats, do so, not just for the meat or income you can derive but also for their dung to help make organic fertilizers.
2) PREPARE YOUR LAND, e.g., plant fertility-restoring trees or plants such as madre cacao, ipil-ipil from which you can get very ‘nutritious’ leaves to help make compost natural fertilizer; Napier grasses for your livestock; etc. Let your madre cacao or ipil-ipil also serve as your future fence for your goats or cows. The Napier grasses shall serve as feeds for your livestock.
3) SPEND MUCH OF YOUR PRESENT INCOME IN ENSURING A LONG-TERM PRODUCTIVITY OF YOUR LAND-FARM. The best suggestion is: Orchard or fruit trees farm, say, mango farm to be sooner or later integrated with livestock (e.g., VISION: ONE COW PER MANGO TREE), honeybee culture, poultry, etc. Another good suggestion is for barren portions to be planted with lumber trees – for your housing needs, for income, for production of fresh oxygen and many other benefits of a wooded place. Yes, you have to budget for a caretaker. If you still have farming parents, then, you are fortunate. They can provide the necessary labor or supervision to ensure that your orchard is take care of regularly, such as regular clean-up and fertilizing. A lot of compost pits is also recommended to hold the fertile weeds and leaves. You will spend only once for the digging of pits.
Basing on the experience of the Cebuanos, you can have a yearly income of P5,625.00 from 15 mango trees in th3 6th to 7th year after planting. At the 15th year, you will have P17,000.00 a year. At 20th year, you will have P39,469.00 a year. At 30th, you will have P158,339.70 – a year. At 40th year, P253,090.95!
You will start being able to survive from your orchard at year 20 which will yield you some P3,289.00 a month. If you planted the mangoes in your 30th birthday, then, you will experience this P3,289.00 a month income when you will be 50 years old. That is bigger than most pensions!
If you supplement it with vegetables, rice or corn, cows and goats and chicken, then, you will surely survive in the rural.
I am now 39 years old and my more than 15 mangoes are on their 12th year. They will be 20 years old when I will be 47 years old! Our five children will be 19, 17, 15, 13, and 10 at that time.
If I will send them to college, one will be finished at that time. The second will be still in college. The other two will be in high school. The youngest will be in the elementary.
Our UP-lecturer told us he is in his late 50s and still suffer to support his children in college. A wiser plan is to LET OUR CHILDREN GET OR ACQUIRE AN EDUCATION OR SKILL AT LEAST EQUIVALENT TO COLLEGE OR EVEN MORE THAN IT BY TURNING THEM INTO ENTREPRENEURS OF THEIR OWN TALENTS AND SKILLS and so send them to formal school up to high school only.
Result: Enjoying ‘retirement from big education expenses’ is possible for us, their parents, at the same time, our children will have speeded up to become earners far ahead their contemporaries. Also, together, parents and children can work for their orchard and for their talents and businesses, as well as personal and spiritual growth!
If college education be a necessity to become a qualified engineer, for example, then, the effective team-work “the older will support his/her next younger only” can help easen up parents’ load and at the same time, increase the bond of the children because they help one another. I know a couple, who have 10 children, had done this. Their children are now professionals using the formula. It came out that as far as educating is concerned, the parents were as if only having one child! For they only educated their eldest. The rest were educated or supported by their older brother or sister!
So, number of children is not a question if you are wise. Added to that: if you have made LOVE as the main basis of your marriage and family.
So early retirement is feasible. This ‘retirement’ means the withdrawal from city-based works especially if such work is not your talent, shift to agriculture and the pursuit of your talents and above spiritual development. “Retirement” does not mean inactivity; rather, it is heightened activity but one which is suited to what you love doing; it is work still but finally with joy and love!
This early retirement will mean a combination of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY (talent development, utilization and its entrepreneurization). If you opt to stay ‘incomeless’ aside from your mangoes’ income, and just concentrate on your hobbies, and spiritual studies for example, well, it will be up to you.
Much better if you have your talents made ‘cashable’ already. In my case, I am a fledgling book author – not that I have a lack of ideas or topics to write but more so on lack of capital to publish my books. My wife has a better-income-generating skill of cake baking. She is presently manning our small family bakery.
This whole integrated AGRO-INDUSTRIAL formula I am sharing to you is my own experience. Not to say that I have already at the tip of success, no I’m still on the way to success. But you need not dismiss this my humble suggestion (formula) merely because I have not reached the end, because I have not depended on my own exclusive experience – I AM MERELY FOLLOWING THE PATH THAT OTHERS, ALBEIT ONLY A FEW HAVE ALREADY TAKEN AND PROVEN!
The only risk or change that we will need to look at to is: WILL WE BE ABLE TO HAVE THE SAME HARVEST IF WE WILL NOT USE THEIR RECOMMENDED CHEMICALS, that is, if we will solely depend on organic methods? My answer: those who have used 100% organic system in rice (e.g., SRI system) have harvested two to three times greater (240 to 360 sacks a hectare) than what commercial fertilizers could achieve (only 120 sacks a hectare).
You will experience the big break at the 30th year of your mangoes, when your mangoes will give you a whopping P158,339.70 – a year! For that is P 13,194.98 a month! When your mangoes reach jubilee (50th birthday), P 369,164.70 will be the annual income, or a monthly income of P30,763.73. That’s an executive’s salary! A rich man’s income already!
At 60th, the half a million peso mark is passed!
Yes, by only 15 mango trees!
These estimates constituted 70% of all fruits, where 30% are considered not for the market.
Take note that these 15 mango trees should be planted on a half an hectare lot. For the ideal number of mango trees in a hectare is 30. Take note also that the buying price is put initially at P0.75 per fruit on ‘corridas’ basis with a successive 10% yearly rise.[2]
DISABLED LAND
No matter how much they will force us and say “There is only barren mind, not barren land”, reality still discourages.
I had started trying to live in the countryside since 1996 with my family. And I say that my mind is far from being barren. I have the most cultivated and intelligent mind you can find, not to brag. I graduated as valedictorian both elementary and high school and with high honors in my computer course, and worked as corporate planner and strategist in a big corporation which sent me to Manila to undergo special courses and trainings a number of times, plus countless of ‘state-side’ business books and magazines which I bought for the company, read and studied for 4 years, acquiring the knowledge more than any university can offer, and added to that: another 13 years of business and community development.
My present condition: WE GOT 95% OF OUR INCOME FROM OUR MENTAL-BUSINESS KNOWHOW, not yet from agriculture, e.g., orchard. The orchard shall rise like a morning star as soon as we reach our life’s sunset.
Our land has been admittedly made DISABLED by CHEMICALS, that is, fertilizers, pesticides, flower inducers, etc. Its present inability to sustain is in reality making us discourage to go back to farming or to depend on it for our survival.
For the ancient natural fertility of our soil has been destroyed by the chemicals as well as the continuing soil erosion due to the destruction of forest and flooding.
I insist that my mind is not barren; but it is miseducated in so far as I am not educated to do agriculture. My mind is misfit in this agriculture place. I am ignorant agriculture knowledge. So, this mind of agricultural ignorance must be turned into a mind that possesses sufficient knowledge in agriculture in order to be able to make the land productive and profitable, if not immediately but surely in the long run – in just the right time before we pass this world away!
The rest of the blessings of our planning and efforts will be for our children, when we will no longer be around!
So, their proverb must be interpreted as: “REFORMAT YOUR MISFITTEDLY WELL-EDUCATED MIND OR ADD TO IT BASIC WORKABLE KNOWLEDGE IN AGRICULTURE SO THAT YOU CAN TURN YOUR NOW BARREN LAND INTO AN OASIS OF LOVE AND LIFE AS WELL AS A WELLSPRING OF PEACE, JOY AND FREEDOM IN GREAT ABUNDANCE.”
BACK UP THE INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS
If you are an OFW or a businessman, it is of great urgency that you will give deeper thought and consideration to what I have been writing here. It is time to think about it while you still have the money to help you finance the transformation of your barren land into the oasis and wellspring that you dreamed of. A kind of paradise.
Do not continue wasting your money in materialistic spending which you will regret later, and can do nothing anymore to recover those lost money. These materialistic spending refers to those which will not give you real long-term benefits. Many of those you eat or allow your family to eat will not only have no long-term benefits but will also give you future headaches when they will cause you cancers, cardio-vascular diseases, diabetes, etc. Think of it.
Education of your children is a good investment. But be sure where will that education bring your children. Will it become education that enslaves or that will confine your children to mere employeeship – which is usually the modern equivalent to slavery?
Remember that our present kind and quality of education is not equivalent to decent and quality works abroad, but only is considered good for domestic helping, care giving, and miserably, prostitution! Yes, our teachers and other professionals are made prostitutes or maid-slaves abroad!
What kind of educational system is this? – which ‘turned’ our professionals or degree holder into slaves, maids, and prostitutes?
Where is the respect a college diploma is said to deserve?
Where are the decent jobs equivalent to our college courses?
A SPEEDY RESTORATION OF OUR FARM AND VILLAGES IS IN ORDER!
This calls the ACTION AND ALLOCATION OF OUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNITS (LGUs). Funds must also be sourced from the national government in order to hasten the agricultural restoration in our villages. Both the National Government and the LGUs must slow down its addiction to concrete-infrastructural projects and make a poll vault in the agricultural arena.
New farms must be created or old ones improved by carving out of the mountain slopes and tops terraces to prevent further erosion and to give way for soil refilling and fattening.
LGU and NG support for the long-term and lasting refertilization of the soil, land preparation, orchard planting, livestock raising, honeybee culture, etc. shall be maximized!
Guidance and support from expert NGOs and foundations are also needed. Also from the churches and schools and media.
Every institution must be involved. Every one.
Godspeed Every one!
---------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Mango planters in Cebu, as their experience were recorded in the publication “Cebu Tecnoguide – Mango, by Central Visayas Technology Packaging Project, 1991
[2] Source brochure: Cebu Tecnoguide – Mango, by Central Visayas Technology Packaging Project, 1991
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
SPIRITUAL AND AGRO-INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
SPIRITUAL AND AGRO-INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION
FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
An integration of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY is the way we should go!
The present trend of our education and work which is bound to the cities, brothels and factories, making us tied or enslaved to a foreigner’s house or inside prostitution dens, without freedom, without fresh air, without the chance to sing happy songs – an education that makes us into employees and slaves especially abroad regardless of what diploma and license we have achieved, making our years of sacrifices in study useless –
this present trend of mediocrity and misery must be halted!
But we can’t stop our children from preparing to go to the cities and foreign countries – unless we can give them better and more secure alternative.
So, the exodus to the cities and foreign countries has to continue for years and the sufferings. That we can not stop. The alternative is: unemployment and hunger at home due to the demise of agriculture and the fall of our local industries due to anti-counterfeiting law and the ongoing globalization or entry of superior and cheaper foreign goods and stronger businesses.
THIS LEADS ME TO DESIGN WHAT WE MAY CALL “QUALITY EDUCATION FOR THE POOR”.
This is not impossible. But what do we mean by “Quality Education for the Poor”?
First, let us let the dream of our hearts be clearly articulated. What do all of us really want? Where do we want to work, live, retire, and die?
The easy answer is: HERE AT HOME!
Therefore, our POOR’S EDUCATION must be opposite to the present one which educates us to do works not found in our barangays! The present so-called modern education is pushing our children away from home, parents, loved ones! It is taking our children to the cities and foreign countries!
If only the parents and relatives of these overseas Filipinos knew the sufferings these OFWs went and are going through!
God the Father wants us to be happy, intact as a family, living in peace, love and freedom from poverty and oppression.
It is easy to happen in the place God gave us to be our home. But in other countries, it is not so easy.
My line of ambition is simple: If I have my God, my family, relatives, friends, and sufficient work and freedom to grow in peace, love, then, what more would I ask for? I need nothing else. Ordinary, simple living, not so poor, not so rich, where our need is provided with God’s help on time. A simple house, a simple living, but well-cultivated mind and heart in the love of God, neighbor and self. A life which is assured of Christ’s salvation and dedicated for the salvation of the fellowmen. A life which is blessed with heath, peace, happiness, and freedom. A life where we are with the ones we love and the ones who care for us, including our parents whom we owe much.
If we can convince our children of such simple ambition instead of going abroad to build royal houses, while they fail to build a stable home, with wives committing adultery and children becoming drug addicts, then we have accomplished the first step: CURBING MATERIALISTIC AMBITION that, quoting the apostle Paul, led people to “fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction…” and led people to “wander from the faith and pierce themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:9-10).
That is SPIRITUAL EDUCATION affecting the heart and mind.
The second step is for us parents and leaders to BE ABLE TO GIVE OUR CHILDREN THE EDUCATION AND WORK OPPORTUNITIES WHERE THEY CAN EARN SUFFICIENTLY FOR THEIR FAMILIES AND EXTENDED RELATIVES.
I am referring to AGRO-INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT as the first twin areas to generate livelihood and jobs for our succeeding generations HERE IN OUR BACKYARD! I really wonder why our leaders and fathers had not seen to it that we would not be driven out of our home and country by poverty to hostile foreign lands. I envy, to tell you the truth, the government policy of the Germany, Japan, the U.S. and other mature governments: they see to it that their people are well-fed, well-clothed, sheltered and secure at home – in their own country! My heart bleeds to see this is not the case in our own land. We are beaten by government graft and corruption and massive poverty and unemployment so that we are forced to migrate – against our own will – against the desire of our hearts!
If my little strength be a mustard seed, so that from it, the strength of Hercules can be mustered, then, I would like to sow this little strength – in my humble effort to stop or reverse the trend. I WORK TO STOP OR SLOW DOWN THE EXODUS OF OUR YOUTH AND OUR WOMEN (MOTHERS AND WIVES) TO THE FAR-AWAY CITIES AND TO STRANGE LANDS AND COUNTRIES USUALLY HOSTILE TO US and where they would be oppressed!
And this effort should be focused, among others, in generating IN-HOME AGRO-INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT enough to feed our youth, women and children.
This is the task of men.
And this is where government schools can focus! This is the area which the government is better prepared of than our private colleges and universities.
Our goals:
· Create farmers who are also scientists and entrepreneurs. Add science and entrepreneurships to farming.
· Enlightened science, godly chemistry = study of God’s wise and loving Order and ordained processes and to work according to such wise Order, not against it, nor to foolishly alter it due to plain personal arrogance.
· Christian Chemistry where we study God’s chemical elements and their Nature’s God-ordained interactions, not make our own combinations to cut corners, make short-cuts, violate God’s law of patience, just to attain personal GREED AND THE GET-RICH-QUICK mentality.
· For example: To understand how God has arranged Nature or the environment to make its own fertilizers, and not the synthetic, lab-made inorganic fertilizer of German chemist Fritz Haber, the urea, which has destroyed the soil of the nations all over the world and given breast and cervical cancers to our women and cancers and various physical and mental deformities to our infants and children!
· After we understand God’s natural processes, ours is to ‘ride on it’ so to speak, not to oppose it, nor alter it, but instead to support it for maximum effect. For example, instead of burning the weeds and leaves, we should instead gather more weeds to fill our compost pits! Instead of killing the earthworms and microbes with the inorganic chemical fertilizers and pesticides, let us not only stop using such chemical fertilizers and pesticides but also help our earthworms and microbes thrive such as by plowing our land from time to time to make the soil softer for the earthworms to easily move and thrive! We have to remove or stop pouring chemicals into our soil which will destroy these friendly micro-animals created by God to make the soil fertile for man.
· We now know that trees are necessary to ‘create’ better climate, that is, to make rains regular and sufficient. Therefore, as scientist-farmers, we must be expert in tree growing. We must know God’s ways – where to plant trees so as not to block the sunrise needed by the plants, and to help conserve the soil and hold water underground; how to plant trees form optimum growth; etc. These and similar pieces of knowledge are what consist TRUE SCIENCE.
As budding scientist-farmers ourselves, many detailed things we can discuss, but I leave them to some other time. The main point is our mission: SCIENCE FOR OUR AGRICULTURE’S SUSTAINABLE GROWTH, NOT AGAINST IT.
What is very sad of our present Science is that: IT DESTROYS OUR AGRICULTURE. IT AS DESTROYED THE ENVIRONMENT. IT HAS TERRIBLE DISTURBED THE HARMONY AND BALANCE OF ECOLOGY, causing each part unable to function in its assigned task in the sustenance of life in this planet! Look at the land. It is supposed to feed its population. True to God’s warning, abuse would lead to the atmosphere becoming like iron (no rain) and the ground like bronze (no productivity). And this is all because of man’s foolish meddling with Nature’s ways, altering processes ordained by the all-wise and perfect God.
We want SCIENCE FOR HEALTH AND LIFE. What is sad with today’s present science is that: Its chemical combinations or formula (formulations) have destroyed our bodies, minds and lives! It is the chemists’ chemical formulations made into medicines, vitamin supplements, fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic food, food additives, food preservatives, flavor enhancers, etc, THAT ARE TEARING OUR BODY’S CELLS APART AND CAUSING MANY OF THEM TO PRE-MATURELY DECAY (e.g., gangrene, diabetes, cancers, ulcers, etc.).
So our first mission is to make this AGRO-INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FEASIBLE FOR OUR CHILDREN. Today, our expensive and health-destructive INORGANIC METHOD OF FARMING makes farming economically unfeasible and health-wise unadvisable.
At the top, chemical fertilizers and pesticides must be banned!
In the bottom, the masses must be taught how to make their own organic fertilizers and pesticides from available weeds, leaves, etc.,
And at the same time, to supplement farmers’ slow fertilizer production, the mass-production and sale of organic fertilizers by, say, those who have access to abundant raw materials such as chicken dung, etc., must be encouraged, to hasten the restoration of natural fertility.
In the bottom, wrong practices such as weeds burning must be stopped. . Only a small quantity of weeds shall be burned to produce potassium; the greater quantity of weeds shall be composted to produce nitrogen and other important elements necessary for plant life and fruit-bearing. Compost making must be taught and learned by all.
In short, these things and everything that can help us make up for having failed for centuries to obey God’s simple yet very important command: “Replenish the earth”! (Genesis 1:28). Replenish means to fill again, to return what was taken. For example, if as a scientist-farmer we know that we have taken from a particular lot of soil some 20 kilograms of NH3 (Nitrogen and Hydrogen = ammonia), then, by understanding God’s Natural order, we can replenish the supply of ammonia in that particular soil and make it rich again to the next planting season!
Our ignorant self-centered ancestor farmers did not replenish but allowed soil and nutrients to disappear.
At the same time, our scientists, subservient to greedy big business and more interested of tying our noses like cows so they can control us and make us subservient to buy their fertilizers, did not replenish but killed our soil!
We both need RIGHT KNOWLEDGE OR TECHNOLOGY to become right farmers and correct scientists!
As what I have pointed out, we must do everything to PREPARE OUR AGRICULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN TO MANAGE. We must totally remove all hindrances that have made our children abandon agriculture and pursue foreign-employment-oriented education.
It helps to make them realize the disadvantages of working in the cities and abroad. It also helps to remove all disadvantages associated with agriculture.
How?
By tying it up with agriculture-friendly industry. I think that agriculture + industry or agro-industry combination is more attractive to our children because industry refers to mind development, or mental talents education which you can turn into a profession (e.g., doctor) or well-paid talent (e.g., music) and later on, a great enterprise (personal business) and in the twilight of your life, an industry (after you will have taught your knowledge and imparted your talents to the young)! This means to say that at the earlier stage, while you farm, you are also a doctor or a great musician, but later on, you will serve as a teacher of your own talent to the younger generations!
The story of the music industry of Loboc is inspiring. It started with one person who worked for the Church rondalia (music choir and band) long time ago during the Spanish time in the 17th or was it 8th century. This musician taught the children note-reading, voice lessons, for individual and choir singing, etc. That was when the seed (love) of music was sown in the fertile soil of Loboc. Now, a century or two has passed and we are eye-witnesses of its beautiful fruits: the Loboc children’s choir for example is a world-class and world champion bringing both honor and money to the people of Loboc!
That is what I would like to happen with every talent God has given to each of us. It does not matter if only one person has it now. What matters is that it will be first of all developed, then, commercialized (for economic benefits of many) and then shared so that an industry will rise from that original one man’s talent. It will be like the only one seed that later, after years, became a whole vast forest. What is true with the seed and forest must also be true with the talent and industry: TALENT MUST BECOME AN INDUSTRY; AN INDUSTRY MUST BE BASED ON TALENT.
With the advent of great inventions like the computer-internet, you can work as an architect at home, connected to your clients in the cities, countryside or even abroad by your broad-band internet, but also at the same time, you have a well-developed farm, such as ORCHARD (fruit garden), flower garden, vegetable garden, rice or corn fields, -- all of these are well-arranged and beautifully done like what every good architect would wish to do!
So there your creativity and sense of beauty finds full expression, and not just in your being a designer of beautiful houses and buildings.
Our stereo-type view of farming or agriculture is the dirt, the hard toil, the smelly sweats, and the long wait. Contrast it to the white uniform in the office or the coat and tie of an engineer, the air-conditioned rooms and offices, the easy chairs, the delicious fats and the sweets desserts – all make up a lifestyle that, as we now know and have realized a little late, MAKE YOU A CANDIDATE OF CARDIOVASCULAR, DIABETIES AND CANCER DISEASES – to die young without ever enjoying the slow pace and peaceful life in the countryside, under the shade of the trees, listening to the sound of silence, or the songs of the wind, or the melodies of the birds, communing silently with the Creator and Savior of our souls, preparing our badly educated lives for the life beyond, having wasted much of our younger days in frivolities and temporary and sinful pleasures.
Our constituents are fed up with our politicians’ platform centered on concrete infrastructures. This is a good trend. They are realizing – they have been informed – that the 20% Development Fund of the province, municipalities and barangays are for DEVELOPMENT and this refers to livelihood, education, skills training, job enhancement training programs, supply of tools, equipment needed to improve work quality and quantity. Our workers are coming to know that this 20% DF is not after all for infrastructure projects (e.g., roads, bridges, buildings) especially if these do not contribute to the generation of employment, increase of income and improvement of the quality of life, liberation from slavery, poverty, sickness and foreign domination!
I am not saying that roads are totally useless. Roads help us especially those which connect farm to the market. Better roads improve our comfort and efficiency as well as safety. Selling our farm produce as well as business can be done efficiently if we have good roads. So, we need roads.
But what I am against is the over-emphasis of roads as if there is no other more – read: more! – important projects and priorities! I was informed that in Manila, they scraped out still very good concrete roads to make way for a new one! What is this foolishness?
In some barangays, still good roofs of their barangay halls were replaced with new ones. How bad in finance these men are! I am asking: Why not use that 20% DF to flatten our hills and terrace the slopes to create farm that can sustain all generations forever? That could be our lasting legacy to our children. Besides, how much families will be kept intact and protected from being a broken OFW family, because of the fertile farms you have bequeathed to your children?
I have to be frank and direct: for the past leaderships since the 1950s, the emphasis of the government is CONCRETE INFRASTRUCTURE, not human infrastructure, nor AGRO-INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE.
Result: Their concrete roads and bridges have benefited more the foreign multi-national companies who use these road and bridges more often than we do! Our leaders’ emphasis on this concrete infrastructure serve the foreigners and as we know, their pockets, more than the needs of our people.
Human infrastructure refers to whatever is necessary for the development of our people – their minds and hearts, their character, their talents, their skills, their careers or businesses and for their marriages and families.
Industrial infrastructure is akin to human infra in that industry first refers to mind development, and then, to the technology, machineries, tools, equipment associated with an industry and business.
Agricultural infrastructure is the set of facilities and knowledge to make farming easier for farmers to make farming more productive yet sustainable, not like today’s where for a time (only in the early 1960s through ‘70s) they achieved significant rice yield increase but to the sacrifice of the sustainability of farming and death of the soil fertility, thus, this has done damage to the present and future. The empirical data and documented cases supporting the finding that chemical-based farming has damaged the health and caused death of countless of farmers and consumers are there for us to see.
* * * * *
ORGANIC FARMING IS THE WAY TO GO. THAT IS THE METHOD FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE.
INTEGRATION OF FRUIT TREES, GRAINS, LIVESTOCKS, FLOWERS, EVEN HONEY BEE CULTURE – THIS IS THE WAY TO GO! This requires entrepreneurship, management.
This is already enough to make man busy all throughout his life. He does not need to rule over his fellowman. What God wanted and still wants is that we rule over creation, but treat our fellowmen our equal - as brothers; we are not to rule over them. Genesis 1:28; 1 Samuel 8; Matthew 23:8-12 & 20:25-28 with John 13:1-17 are enough proofs that GOD DOES NOT FAVOR HUMAN GOVERNMENT. HE FAVORS GOD’S KINGDOM OVER US, WHILE WE SERVE AND TREAT ONE ANOTHER AS BROTHERS AND SISTERS. HIS WILL IS NOT MAN RULING OVER HIS FELLOWMAN. HIS WILL IS FATHERHOOD [KINGSHIP] OF GOD AND BROTHERHOOD OF MEN. In God’s Kingdom, hierarchy will be removed; it will be a government of only two layers: God and man -- Father and children (Matthew 23:8-11; John 10:1-16). This is coming soon: God’s Kingdom will replace human hierarchic government.
Development of our people’s mental talents to become a profession, an expertise, an enterprise and finally, a growing industry employing many others of similar or related skills – this too is the way!
May I reiterate:
An integration of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY GUIDED BY SPIRITUALITY is the way we should go!
The present trend of our education and work which is bound to the cities, brothels and factories, making us tied or enslaved to a foreigner’s house or inside prostitution dens, without freedom, without fresh air, without the chance to sing happy songs – an education that makes us into employees and slaves especially abroad regardless of what diploma and license we have achieved, making our years of sacrifices in study useless – this present trend of mediocrity and misery must be halted!
But we can’t stop our children from preparing to go to the cities and foreign countries – unless we can give them better and more secure alternative.
So, the exodus to the cities and foreign countries has to continue for years and the sufferings. That we can not stop. The alternative is: unemployment and hunger at home due to the demise of agriculture and the fall of our local industries due to anti-counterfeiting law and the ongoing globalization or entry of superior and cheaper foreign goods and stronger businesses.
If somebody of us has to go abroad, it shall be for the purpose of acquiring additional wisdom, right education, technology, machinery and capital for development at home. Secondly, some of us shall go abroad to sell our products and services – not body and soul anymore!
As leaders, it is our duty to offer and even create a better alternative and to my view, it is a combination SPIRITUAL EDUCATION AND AGRO-INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. IN SHORT, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT!
***
FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
An integration of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY is the way we should go!
The present trend of our education and work which is bound to the cities, brothels and factories, making us tied or enslaved to a foreigner’s house or inside prostitution dens, without freedom, without fresh air, without the chance to sing happy songs – an education that makes us into employees and slaves especially abroad regardless of what diploma and license we have achieved, making our years of sacrifices in study useless –
this present trend of mediocrity and misery must be halted!
But we can’t stop our children from preparing to go to the cities and foreign countries – unless we can give them better and more secure alternative.
So, the exodus to the cities and foreign countries has to continue for years and the sufferings. That we can not stop. The alternative is: unemployment and hunger at home due to the demise of agriculture and the fall of our local industries due to anti-counterfeiting law and the ongoing globalization or entry of superior and cheaper foreign goods and stronger businesses.
THIS LEADS ME TO DESIGN WHAT WE MAY CALL “QUALITY EDUCATION FOR THE POOR”.
This is not impossible. But what do we mean by “Quality Education for the Poor”?
First, let us let the dream of our hearts be clearly articulated. What do all of us really want? Where do we want to work, live, retire, and die?
The easy answer is: HERE AT HOME!
Therefore, our POOR’S EDUCATION must be opposite to the present one which educates us to do works not found in our barangays! The present so-called modern education is pushing our children away from home, parents, loved ones! It is taking our children to the cities and foreign countries!
If only the parents and relatives of these overseas Filipinos knew the sufferings these OFWs went and are going through!
God the Father wants us to be happy, intact as a family, living in peace, love and freedom from poverty and oppression.
It is easy to happen in the place God gave us to be our home. But in other countries, it is not so easy.
My line of ambition is simple: If I have my God, my family, relatives, friends, and sufficient work and freedom to grow in peace, love, then, what more would I ask for? I need nothing else. Ordinary, simple living, not so poor, not so rich, where our need is provided with God’s help on time. A simple house, a simple living, but well-cultivated mind and heart in the love of God, neighbor and self. A life which is assured of Christ’s salvation and dedicated for the salvation of the fellowmen. A life which is blessed with heath, peace, happiness, and freedom. A life where we are with the ones we love and the ones who care for us, including our parents whom we owe much.
If we can convince our children of such simple ambition instead of going abroad to build royal houses, while they fail to build a stable home, with wives committing adultery and children becoming drug addicts, then we have accomplished the first step: CURBING MATERIALISTIC AMBITION that, quoting the apostle Paul, led people to “fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction…” and led people to “wander from the faith and pierce themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:9-10).
That is SPIRITUAL EDUCATION affecting the heart and mind.
The second step is for us parents and leaders to BE ABLE TO GIVE OUR CHILDREN THE EDUCATION AND WORK OPPORTUNITIES WHERE THEY CAN EARN SUFFICIENTLY FOR THEIR FAMILIES AND EXTENDED RELATIVES.
I am referring to AGRO-INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT as the first twin areas to generate livelihood and jobs for our succeeding generations HERE IN OUR BACKYARD! I really wonder why our leaders and fathers had not seen to it that we would not be driven out of our home and country by poverty to hostile foreign lands. I envy, to tell you the truth, the government policy of the Germany, Japan, the U.S. and other mature governments: they see to it that their people are well-fed, well-clothed, sheltered and secure at home – in their own country! My heart bleeds to see this is not the case in our own land. We are beaten by government graft and corruption and massive poverty and unemployment so that we are forced to migrate – against our own will – against the desire of our hearts!
If my little strength be a mustard seed, so that from it, the strength of Hercules can be mustered, then, I would like to sow this little strength – in my humble effort to stop or reverse the trend. I WORK TO STOP OR SLOW DOWN THE EXODUS OF OUR YOUTH AND OUR WOMEN (MOTHERS AND WIVES) TO THE FAR-AWAY CITIES AND TO STRANGE LANDS AND COUNTRIES USUALLY HOSTILE TO US and where they would be oppressed!
And this effort should be focused, among others, in generating IN-HOME AGRO-INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT enough to feed our youth, women and children.
This is the task of men.
And this is where government schools can focus! This is the area which the government is better prepared of than our private colleges and universities.
Our goals:
· Create farmers who are also scientists and entrepreneurs. Add science and entrepreneurships to farming.
· Enlightened science, godly chemistry = study of God’s wise and loving Order and ordained processes and to work according to such wise Order, not against it, nor to foolishly alter it due to plain personal arrogance.
· Christian Chemistry where we study God’s chemical elements and their Nature’s God-ordained interactions, not make our own combinations to cut corners, make short-cuts, violate God’s law of patience, just to attain personal GREED AND THE GET-RICH-QUICK mentality.
· For example: To understand how God has arranged Nature or the environment to make its own fertilizers, and not the synthetic, lab-made inorganic fertilizer of German chemist Fritz Haber, the urea, which has destroyed the soil of the nations all over the world and given breast and cervical cancers to our women and cancers and various physical and mental deformities to our infants and children!
· After we understand God’s natural processes, ours is to ‘ride on it’ so to speak, not to oppose it, nor alter it, but instead to support it for maximum effect. For example, instead of burning the weeds and leaves, we should instead gather more weeds to fill our compost pits! Instead of killing the earthworms and microbes with the inorganic chemical fertilizers and pesticides, let us not only stop using such chemical fertilizers and pesticides but also help our earthworms and microbes thrive such as by plowing our land from time to time to make the soil softer for the earthworms to easily move and thrive! We have to remove or stop pouring chemicals into our soil which will destroy these friendly micro-animals created by God to make the soil fertile for man.
· We now know that trees are necessary to ‘create’ better climate, that is, to make rains regular and sufficient. Therefore, as scientist-farmers, we must be expert in tree growing. We must know God’s ways – where to plant trees so as not to block the sunrise needed by the plants, and to help conserve the soil and hold water underground; how to plant trees form optimum growth; etc. These and similar pieces of knowledge are what consist TRUE SCIENCE.
As budding scientist-farmers ourselves, many detailed things we can discuss, but I leave them to some other time. The main point is our mission: SCIENCE FOR OUR AGRICULTURE’S SUSTAINABLE GROWTH, NOT AGAINST IT.
What is very sad of our present Science is that: IT DESTROYS OUR AGRICULTURE. IT AS DESTROYED THE ENVIRONMENT. IT HAS TERRIBLE DISTURBED THE HARMONY AND BALANCE OF ECOLOGY, causing each part unable to function in its assigned task in the sustenance of life in this planet! Look at the land. It is supposed to feed its population. True to God’s warning, abuse would lead to the atmosphere becoming like iron (no rain) and the ground like bronze (no productivity). And this is all because of man’s foolish meddling with Nature’s ways, altering processes ordained by the all-wise and perfect God.
We want SCIENCE FOR HEALTH AND LIFE. What is sad with today’s present science is that: Its chemical combinations or formula (formulations) have destroyed our bodies, minds and lives! It is the chemists’ chemical formulations made into medicines, vitamin supplements, fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic food, food additives, food preservatives, flavor enhancers, etc, THAT ARE TEARING OUR BODY’S CELLS APART AND CAUSING MANY OF THEM TO PRE-MATURELY DECAY (e.g., gangrene, diabetes, cancers, ulcers, etc.).
So our first mission is to make this AGRO-INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION FEASIBLE FOR OUR CHILDREN. Today, our expensive and health-destructive INORGANIC METHOD OF FARMING makes farming economically unfeasible and health-wise unadvisable.
At the top, chemical fertilizers and pesticides must be banned!
In the bottom, the masses must be taught how to make their own organic fertilizers and pesticides from available weeds, leaves, etc.,
And at the same time, to supplement farmers’ slow fertilizer production, the mass-production and sale of organic fertilizers by, say, those who have access to abundant raw materials such as chicken dung, etc., must be encouraged, to hasten the restoration of natural fertility.
In the bottom, wrong practices such as weeds burning must be stopped. . Only a small quantity of weeds shall be burned to produce potassium; the greater quantity of weeds shall be composted to produce nitrogen and other important elements necessary for plant life and fruit-bearing. Compost making must be taught and learned by all.
In short, these things and everything that can help us make up for having failed for centuries to obey God’s simple yet very important command: “Replenish the earth”! (Genesis 1:28). Replenish means to fill again, to return what was taken. For example, if as a scientist-farmer we know that we have taken from a particular lot of soil some 20 kilograms of NH3 (Nitrogen and Hydrogen = ammonia), then, by understanding God’s Natural order, we can replenish the supply of ammonia in that particular soil and make it rich again to the next planting season!
Our ignorant self-centered ancestor farmers did not replenish but allowed soil and nutrients to disappear.
At the same time, our scientists, subservient to greedy big business and more interested of tying our noses like cows so they can control us and make us subservient to buy their fertilizers, did not replenish but killed our soil!
We both need RIGHT KNOWLEDGE OR TECHNOLOGY to become right farmers and correct scientists!
As what I have pointed out, we must do everything to PREPARE OUR AGRICULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN TO MANAGE. We must totally remove all hindrances that have made our children abandon agriculture and pursue foreign-employment-oriented education.
It helps to make them realize the disadvantages of working in the cities and abroad. It also helps to remove all disadvantages associated with agriculture.
How?
By tying it up with agriculture-friendly industry. I think that agriculture + industry or agro-industry combination is more attractive to our children because industry refers to mind development, or mental talents education which you can turn into a profession (e.g., doctor) or well-paid talent (e.g., music) and later on, a great enterprise (personal business) and in the twilight of your life, an industry (after you will have taught your knowledge and imparted your talents to the young)! This means to say that at the earlier stage, while you farm, you are also a doctor or a great musician, but later on, you will serve as a teacher of your own talent to the younger generations!
The story of the music industry of Loboc is inspiring. It started with one person who worked for the Church rondalia (music choir and band) long time ago during the Spanish time in the 17th or was it 8th century. This musician taught the children note-reading, voice lessons, for individual and choir singing, etc. That was when the seed (love) of music was sown in the fertile soil of Loboc. Now, a century or two has passed and we are eye-witnesses of its beautiful fruits: the Loboc children’s choir for example is a world-class and world champion bringing both honor and money to the people of Loboc!
That is what I would like to happen with every talent God has given to each of us. It does not matter if only one person has it now. What matters is that it will be first of all developed, then, commercialized (for economic benefits of many) and then shared so that an industry will rise from that original one man’s talent. It will be like the only one seed that later, after years, became a whole vast forest. What is true with the seed and forest must also be true with the talent and industry: TALENT MUST BECOME AN INDUSTRY; AN INDUSTRY MUST BE BASED ON TALENT.
With the advent of great inventions like the computer-internet, you can work as an architect at home, connected to your clients in the cities, countryside or even abroad by your broad-band internet, but also at the same time, you have a well-developed farm, such as ORCHARD (fruit garden), flower garden, vegetable garden, rice or corn fields, -- all of these are well-arranged and beautifully done like what every good architect would wish to do!
So there your creativity and sense of beauty finds full expression, and not just in your being a designer of beautiful houses and buildings.
Our stereo-type view of farming or agriculture is the dirt, the hard toil, the smelly sweats, and the long wait. Contrast it to the white uniform in the office or the coat and tie of an engineer, the air-conditioned rooms and offices, the easy chairs, the delicious fats and the sweets desserts – all make up a lifestyle that, as we now know and have realized a little late, MAKE YOU A CANDIDATE OF CARDIOVASCULAR, DIABETIES AND CANCER DISEASES – to die young without ever enjoying the slow pace and peaceful life in the countryside, under the shade of the trees, listening to the sound of silence, or the songs of the wind, or the melodies of the birds, communing silently with the Creator and Savior of our souls, preparing our badly educated lives for the life beyond, having wasted much of our younger days in frivolities and temporary and sinful pleasures.
Our constituents are fed up with our politicians’ platform centered on concrete infrastructures. This is a good trend. They are realizing – they have been informed – that the 20% Development Fund of the province, municipalities and barangays are for DEVELOPMENT and this refers to livelihood, education, skills training, job enhancement training programs, supply of tools, equipment needed to improve work quality and quantity. Our workers are coming to know that this 20% DF is not after all for infrastructure projects (e.g., roads, bridges, buildings) especially if these do not contribute to the generation of employment, increase of income and improvement of the quality of life, liberation from slavery, poverty, sickness and foreign domination!
I am not saying that roads are totally useless. Roads help us especially those which connect farm to the market. Better roads improve our comfort and efficiency as well as safety. Selling our farm produce as well as business can be done efficiently if we have good roads. So, we need roads.
But what I am against is the over-emphasis of roads as if there is no other more – read: more! – important projects and priorities! I was informed that in Manila, they scraped out still very good concrete roads to make way for a new one! What is this foolishness?
In some barangays, still good roofs of their barangay halls were replaced with new ones. How bad in finance these men are! I am asking: Why not use that 20% DF to flatten our hills and terrace the slopes to create farm that can sustain all generations forever? That could be our lasting legacy to our children. Besides, how much families will be kept intact and protected from being a broken OFW family, because of the fertile farms you have bequeathed to your children?
I have to be frank and direct: for the past leaderships since the 1950s, the emphasis of the government is CONCRETE INFRASTRUCTURE, not human infrastructure, nor AGRO-INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE.
Result: Their concrete roads and bridges have benefited more the foreign multi-national companies who use these road and bridges more often than we do! Our leaders’ emphasis on this concrete infrastructure serve the foreigners and as we know, their pockets, more than the needs of our people.
Human infrastructure refers to whatever is necessary for the development of our people – their minds and hearts, their character, their talents, their skills, their careers or businesses and for their marriages and families.
Industrial infrastructure is akin to human infra in that industry first refers to mind development, and then, to the technology, machineries, tools, equipment associated with an industry and business.
Agricultural infrastructure is the set of facilities and knowledge to make farming easier for farmers to make farming more productive yet sustainable, not like today’s where for a time (only in the early 1960s through ‘70s) they achieved significant rice yield increase but to the sacrifice of the sustainability of farming and death of the soil fertility, thus, this has done damage to the present and future. The empirical data and documented cases supporting the finding that chemical-based farming has damaged the health and caused death of countless of farmers and consumers are there for us to see.
* * * * *
ORGANIC FARMING IS THE WAY TO GO. THAT IS THE METHOD FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE.
INTEGRATION OF FRUIT TREES, GRAINS, LIVESTOCKS, FLOWERS, EVEN HONEY BEE CULTURE – THIS IS THE WAY TO GO! This requires entrepreneurship, management.
This is already enough to make man busy all throughout his life. He does not need to rule over his fellowman. What God wanted and still wants is that we rule over creation, but treat our fellowmen our equal - as brothers; we are not to rule over them. Genesis 1:28; 1 Samuel 8; Matthew 23:8-12 & 20:25-28 with John 13:1-17 are enough proofs that GOD DOES NOT FAVOR HUMAN GOVERNMENT. HE FAVORS GOD’S KINGDOM OVER US, WHILE WE SERVE AND TREAT ONE ANOTHER AS BROTHERS AND SISTERS. HIS WILL IS NOT MAN RULING OVER HIS FELLOWMAN. HIS WILL IS FATHERHOOD [KINGSHIP] OF GOD AND BROTHERHOOD OF MEN. In God’s Kingdom, hierarchy will be removed; it will be a government of only two layers: God and man -- Father and children (Matthew 23:8-11; John 10:1-16). This is coming soon: God’s Kingdom will replace human hierarchic government.
Development of our people’s mental talents to become a profession, an expertise, an enterprise and finally, a growing industry employing many others of similar or related skills – this too is the way!
May I reiterate:
An integration of AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY GUIDED BY SPIRITUALITY is the way we should go!
The present trend of our education and work which is bound to the cities, brothels and factories, making us tied or enslaved to a foreigner’s house or inside prostitution dens, without freedom, without fresh air, without the chance to sing happy songs – an education that makes us into employees and slaves especially abroad regardless of what diploma and license we have achieved, making our years of sacrifices in study useless – this present trend of mediocrity and misery must be halted!
But we can’t stop our children from preparing to go to the cities and foreign countries – unless we can give them better and more secure alternative.
So, the exodus to the cities and foreign countries has to continue for years and the sufferings. That we can not stop. The alternative is: unemployment and hunger at home due to the demise of agriculture and the fall of our local industries due to anti-counterfeiting law and the ongoing globalization or entry of superior and cheaper foreign goods and stronger businesses.
If somebody of us has to go abroad, it shall be for the purpose of acquiring additional wisdom, right education, technology, machinery and capital for development at home. Secondly, some of us shall go abroad to sell our products and services – not body and soul anymore!
As leaders, it is our duty to offer and even create a better alternative and to my view, it is a combination SPIRITUAL EDUCATION AND AGRO-INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. IN SHORT, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT!
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AWAY WITH THAT EDUCATION FOR SLAVERY!
AWAY WITH THAT EDUCATION FOR SLAVERY!
“Education of your children is a good investment. But be sure where will that education bring your children. Will it become an education that enslaves or that will confine your children to mere employeeship – which is usually the modern equivalent to slavery?
Remember that our present kind and quality of education is not equivalent to decent and quality works abroad, but only is considered good for domestic helping, care giving, and miserably, prostitution! Yes, our teachers and other professionals are made prostitutes or maid-slaves abroad! Statistics show that for every 20 women who left the country and worked abroad, 19 of them (that is, 95%) ended up sexually abused and in prostitution!! Only 5% of our women are in good hands, that is, in good decent jobs. And this is safe, clean jobs are mostly in nations with good standing in and high respect for human rights, e.g., the English-speaking nations such as the United States of America, Canada, Australia as well as in Europe.
With the long-time illegal flesh trade and even the legally documented OFWs, the Philippines has become a large exporter – read: as a matter of fact, in proportion to total national population, the Philippines is recently the largest exporter in the world - of workers but sadly largely made up of slaves-maids and prostitutes in the guise of GROs and entertainers. In an international lexicon, the word ‘filipina’ is defined as follows: 1) prostitute; 2) (house-) maid. Meanings are based on ‘actual’ reality. Among documented departures, the number of women has tremendously increased due to the government recruitment program “Fly Now Pay Later”. According to the DOLE, ‘more women, middle-aged Pinoys are seeking work abroad, mostly between 25 to 34 years old. But there is an increase for those aged 44 up.
Because according to a DOLE female Secretary “the job of DOLE is to let applicants fly, at wala na kaming pakialam ni control sa mangyayari sa kanila afterwards”, and because of the lack of qualifications and decent jobs for Filipinas abroad, the logic is clear: that 80% of the whole thing that the government is doing is playing the role of a pimp who sells our wives, sisters and daughters abroad as prostitutes!!!
And even government statistics is supporting this fact.
According to POEA, in the past 12 years, there was a sharp rise of women OFWs vis-à-vis male OFWs from a ratio of 3 males:2 females in 1993 to 1:1 in 2005. POEA says recently that ‘NEARLY 75% OF THE NEWLY HIRED ARE WOMEN.’ With a never-happened-before great increase of OFWs the previous year 2006, which was about 1 million, the female casualty is definitely malarial!
That for every 20 women out of the country, 19 of them or 95% fell into sexual abuse, sexual slavery and prostitution is quite a very disturbing statistic that needs our urgent action.
And take note that many of them who work as prostitutes, domestic helpers or care givers are college graduates – even board passers!
What kind of educational system is this? – which ‘turned’ our professionals or degree holder into slaves, maids, and prostitutes?
Even uneducated women do not deserve to be reduced into sex slaves or sex toys, being created after the image of the holy Almighty God: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…’ So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27). In Genesis 2, God gave the woman an exalted role as man’s helpmate and life’s partner to become one with him (v. 20-24). She is to be solely for her husband, to be his assistant and to serve him with her desire (Gen. 3:16). She is man’s co-heir of the gracious gift of eternal life in God’s kingdom, so she deserves ‘respect as the weaker vessel’ (1 Peter 2:7) and to be loved like the way Jesus loved the Church with His life (Ephesians 5:25-33). Man’s goal for the woman is ‘to make her holy… and to present to himself without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless’, ‘to be loved by the man as their own bodies’, to be fed and cared for… (ibid.) This is how special and precious the woman is.
Even then, where is the respect a college diploma is said to deserve?
Where are the decent jobs equivalent to our college courses?
Are we educated to become slaves of others? Slaves are abused; servants are respected and treated as brothers in the Father and Christ. I do not protest that we serve – to be a servant to one’s fellowmen is an honorable calling – the Lord during the Last Supper washed the feet of His disciples and said, “You call Me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord’ and rightly so, for that is what I am… I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you: TO SERVE AND NOT TO BE SERVED AND TO GIVE HIS LIFE AS A RANSOM FOR MANY…Blessings and happiness will be yours if upon knowing this principle, you will do it” (John 13:13-16; Matthew 20:28; John 13:17).
Our fate should not be slavery; loss of freedom, abuse and sufferings are the features of slavery. Our destiny is SERVICE -- Christian servanthood. I do not protest too much about Filipinas becoming a nanny of the children of the Arabs or of the Americans, deduct only the abuses that employers inflict upon many of our nannies or maids.
One redeeming declaration by a Filipina, Precious Quigaman, 2005 Miss International, hailed the lowly work of a nanny as an honorable one: “I take no offense on being typecast as a nanny. But I do take offense that the educated people of the world have somehow degraded the true sense and meaning of what a nanny is. Let me tell you what she is. She is someone who gives more that she takes. She is someone you trust to look after the very people most precious to you, your child, the elderly and yourself. She is the one who has made a living out of caring and loving other people. So those who have typecast us as nannies, thank you. It is a testament to the loving and caring culture of the Filipino people. And for that I am forever proud and grateful of my roots and culture.”
I declare that it is appropriate for young unmarried Filipinas; this will give them the experience they will need when they shall have their own families. But when a Filipina wife and mother leaves her home, children and husband to take care of the children and elderly of another, what has become of her main duty to be the helpmate of her husband in the sense that she is first the nurturer and caregiver of her own children, and not of another’s?
I dare say: This is not God the Father’s will!! For a woman is to leave her father and mother in order to cleave to her husband and build their own family as microcosm of God’s kingdom.
That is the error of our education and situation: wife and mother abandoning her own family in order to serve another family! What has become of her own family? Her husband wastes her allotment (the money she sent home) in vices and women. Her children waste her money in drugs and frivolities. Broken marriages and disintegrated families are the bitter fruits of this error.
And the root cause lies in what a young German son-in-law who visited the Philippines quickly observed as soon as he set foot in the village – he exclaimed: “I’m shocked that your women are the ones who went to school and got the job while your men stood by the stores and got the vices. This is considered a shame, if not a crime, in Germany to see a man not taking charge in earning a living for his own family and securing the necessary education, training and experience in order to fulfill the duty of being the main breadwinner.”
Our education and economy should hold the man the breadwinner and the Filipina, as helpmate, the caregiver – the nurturer - in her own home! That is the ideal – the vision of God for a happy blessed family (Genesis 2:20-24).
Our first focus should be the emancipation of the Filipino man from ignorance (lack of education) and vices and his rise to his potential as man, husband, father and co-builder of his nation.
Our second focus should be the rise of the Filipina to the honorable place God made her for: to be an able, happy, contented helpmate of her beloved husband!
That is our platform. A new full education is in order: Education of the heart to love and education of the mind for wisdom and sharp skills. This education will enable the Filipino man fulfill his calling as the provider of the family and the Filipino woman fulfill her calling as the nurturer of the family, and her husband’s helpmate.
We have the textbook and all the tools to accomplish this platform to usher a golden age for the nation.
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