“Back To The Simple Things” It’ so easy to get all caught up In the fast pace of this modern age Makes you wonder if we’re making progress Or just losing who we are along the way. – Don Williams

Stepping out of the busyness of daily office life as a cabinet official, and coming over to the serenity of country life, deep in a village, in Barangay Balawag, Tabuk, Kalinga, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” F. Piñol is at his best – a farmer for the nation’s farmers. He is not lost to the glitters of this modern age that simply suck the lifeblood out of us and waylay “who we are along the way.”

He notices a couple of chicken feeding on a grassy field and understands what the problem is. He wants to bring back traditional chicken-raising in the countryside. He thinks back about those days when farm families simply go to the coop in the backyard when they needed eggs for breakfast.

When a family event is forthcoming, they would hunt the big rooster by his legs at midnight while he is asleep on the branches of the mango tree. For supplies of quality eggs and chicken meat, farmers and their families do not depend on “factory” white chicken and eggs. The farmers during his boyhood days do not give away hard earned cash for something that grazes in the fields nearby and then comes home to roosts in the backyard before dark.

Call it subsistence rural economy, whatever. Do not talk to me about amassing great wealth out of a cage hanging on a wall at the door. This is about a practical, sensible, healthy and homemade food with nature and the elements of a good and well-cared environment that rural folks have forgotten when science so-called, and modern economics promised them they can have it in a box, delivered to their doors, or bought in the nearby store.

If you know the Secretary, this pronouncement to bring back traditional chicken raising is not some empty romantic stuff. He grows native chickens on his farm in Cotabato.

In a village in Balawag, in the mountainous outskirts of Tabuk City, Secretary Piñol said: “Let us bring back the traditional raising of chickens in the farms through a nationwide backyard chicken raising program (NBCRP). We can start this program here,” he added.

To ensure that the program succeeds, he wanted all chickens in the barangay and even the entire province immunized and vaccinated.

Saying, “this is where the real challenge starts,” he said the immunization and vaccination of chickens will be imposed. After which local residents should be encouraged and given basic orientation on the program before the DA starts distributing native chickens.

Tying this initiative to the food sufficiency and sustainability thrust of the Duterte Administration, Secretary Piñol explained that the Department of Agriculture (DA) must encourage Filipinos to raise their own food to lessen the country’s dependence on imported food.

The NBCRP is one, among many programs, the good Secretary has initiated and left in the hands of his subordinates and partners to implement. He vowed to return again and follow up on the progress of the agency’s projects in Kalinga. It is in our hands now guys.-30-