14 March 2020

Binhi Awards For Agricultural Journalism: Relevance To The “New Thinking For Agriculture”


This is the 2020 journalism contest based on 2019 outputs; the title of the Facebook sharing on the Binhi Awards is: 

Excellence In Agriculture Journalism

with the subtitle

The future takes roots
in the binhi of ideas
that you plant today.

The Tagalog “binhi” (Ilocano bin-i) means seeds for sowing.

The 3 Major Categories for the 2019-2020 winners are:

(1)   Agricultural Journalist Of The Year
(2)   Agri Beat Reporter Of The Year
(3)   Environment Journalist Of The Year.

The Minor Categories are 12, including newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, and photojournalism. There are 5 new special categories: SL Agritech Best In Rice Reporting (new), Best Agri Tourism Reporting (new), Young Agri-Vlogger Of The Year (new) – 18 & below, college student; Agri-Vlogger Of The Year (new) – 19 and above; and Best In Agri-Finance Reporting.

At the webpage of the Philippine Agricultural Journalists, PAJ – https://www.pajofficial.com/ – I cannot find any rules or guidelines for judging the reportage. I don’t know why. The Binhi Awards is itself a prize to me, even after 40+ years, because as Chair of the PAJ committee on awards in 1976, the whole package was my idea, including the name. (Binhi also means germ, the beginning of anything[1].)

Today, Friday The 13th, March 2020, there is no PAJ webpage dedicated to Binhi, and that tells me 2 things:

One: They have not written some sort of a Bible for Binhi Awards for all those 44 years. No, not that the PAJ members do not care – just that they have no digital hands! In contrast, my essays are all over the Internet, thousands of them. I graduated with a BSA major in Ag Education, so I must be a good teacher because I taught myself!

Two: Something is missing in the PAJ website about the “New Thinking for Agriculture” with its embedded 8 paradigms to backstop it, all coming from the head of Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie outed since he took over the Department of Agriculture, DA, on 05 August 2019. Journalists should be always up-to-date, right?

The deadline for submission of Binhi entries is March 20 – for more relevant judging, it’s not too late to require the authors of any of the entries to declare the following:

(1)  New Thinking: How are they directly relevant to the “New Thinking for Agriculture”?

(2)  The Paradigms: Which one(s) of the 8 paradigms supporting the “New Thinking for Agriculture” is/are directly involved in the story: Modernization? Industrialization? Promotion of exports? Consolidation of small- and medium-sized farms? Infrastructure development? Higher budget & investment? Legislative support? Roadmap development? Explain in a sentence or two.

Necessarily, the Binhi Awards Committee should be aware of all of the above so that each of them can criticize each entry and justify their vote: Yes, No, Yes + comments. Why not invite PAJ insiders and outsiders to the committee for their knowledge of the “New Thinking for Agriculture”?

Why? The relevance of aggie journalism should now be to the new PH Agriculture in the leadership and headship of Manong Willie!@517








[1] https://www.tagalog-dictionary.com/search?word=binhi



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