Income security: This
concept is highly original – that is the genius of a son of a farmer speaking. Everyone
else talks of food security.
The
way you help the farmer is the way you help your country.
In San Mateo, Isabela, rice farmers harvested 9 MT/ha and netted
P115,000 (Eireene Jairee Gomez, 07
December 2018, “Isabela Rice Farmers’ Harvest Reaches 9 MT/ha[1],” Manilatimes.net). Source of data: Helen
Pasicolan, lead of direct-seeded rice technology promotion of PhilRice in San
Mateo. Yes: Double the harvest, double the income!
If the farmers knew that their farming would
emancipate them from perpetual poverty, they would do what we would tell them
to do, right? Right!
So let us begin from the End, not the
Beginning, of the Value Chain: Farmers’ Income Security, InSecurity.
The InSecurity Value Chain comprises these:
(1) Loan
guarantee – low interest.
(2) Lend
tenure – not land tenure; farm consolidation is enough.
(3) Seed
sense – low-cost seeds.
(4) Weed
master – trash farming, low-cost cultivation, weeds turned to organic
fertilizer.
(5) Maximum
spacing – square planting.
(6) Minimum
irrigation – alternate wet & dry.
(7) Maximum
crop protection – multiple cropping.
(8) Optimum
grains drying – low-cost dryer.
(9) Minimum
labor – minimum tillage, no transplanting.
(10) Maximum
yield – healthy crops.
(11) Optimum storage
– harvest in warehouse, low-cost storage.
(12) Emergency
loan guarantee – against harvest in storage.
(13) Maximum
returns – look at all those low-cost inputs above!
That is how we will guarantee Income Security, InSecurity,
to farmers, whatever crop(s) they plant. With InSecurity, farmers will be
excited to farm all the more so that in a little while, the country will enjoy
food security! (left icon from SANREM Innovation Lab[2],
right from GRAAM[3])
I repeat: We must guarantee InSecurity. The average yield
for the country is 4 MT/ha – so, that San Mateo harvest of 9 MT/ha is more than
twice, and suggests a farmer’s average income of more than twice too. Who is
the farmer who does not want to minimize his costs and maximize his returns?!
For InSecurity, we must manage the end of the value chain,
via Inclusive Marketing, InMarketing. I’m borrowing from the strategy of the International Crops Research
Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, based in India, when PH Secretary
of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie was Director General – they called it inclusive market-oriented development,
IMOD. The farmers were assisted up to and including the marketing of their
produce, so they got what they deserved and not what the merchants would give
them! IMOD was also characterized by warrantage, whereby the farmers during
lean times could make emergency loans against their harvests stored in
warehouses, the harvest to be sold when the prices were right.
Did you notice? Individual farm technicians cannot possibly
assist individual farmers attain those San Mateo double harvests and double
incomes by themselves alone. In other words, we want to make the rice farmers
rich continually. So:
InSecurity
calls for complete and farmer-friendly farm management via a cooperative. With
a coop, in the end, the price is right!@517
[1] https://www.manilatimes.net/2020/03/06/news/headlines/another-petition-filed-vs-abs-cbn/700629/?utm_source=izooto&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=petition%20filed%20vs%20ABS-CBN&utm_content=&utm_term=
[2] https://sanremcrsp.cired.vt.edu/public/about/
[3] http://www.graam.org.in
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