In my travels to South Korea and Japan, I was endlessly amazed at how their farmers were able to produce crops of value from small patches of land.
This is strikingly visible in the mountainous regions of South Korea.
The Igorots of the Cordillera Region are also practising the philosophy of maximum utilization of limited land area.
In contrast, passing through the Provinces of Quezon, the Bicol Region and Samar, I see vast areas of uncultivated lands.
The comparison is more stark in Quezon which is just a few hours drive from the consumer-populated Metro Manila.
Aside from the tall and old coconuts, there is not much farming activity.
Shrubs and tall grass occupy most of the space under the Coconut.
Sayang na sayang ang mga bakanteng lugar na walang tanim.
Where does the problem lie?
I would assume that this is because of the lack of guidance by government on what products could be grown which are needed in the market.
Second is the lack of support facilities such as small irrigation systems, seeds, fertilizer and the needed technical support.
Third, there is a need for working and successful models which could inspire farmers.
Today, I harvested the Hybrid Purple Corn planted in a small vacant patch in my farm 75 days ago.
We expect to harvest about 12 sacks of unhusked young purple corn from the 1 kilo of seeds bought from Kaneko seeds.
I do not intend to sell my corn dahil kulang pa ito sa mga kapatid at kaibigan.
Imagine if I produced 1 ton and sold it at the prevailing price of P25 per kilo for young Purple corn, I would have earned about P25,000 in just 75 days.
I hope this story would inspire other farmers and make our budget managers realize that if we would like to recover from this economic crisis fast, we need to pour our funds to small farming families.
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!
(Video taken by Mark Piñol.)
https://fb.watch/awUVuh6Wc7/
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