Family news

a lot of worry here in the Philippines that we will run out of diesel/LPG. The price went up last week, but now it has come down a bit. It is the start of hot season, meaning that the electrical grid will be stressed by airconditioners, which are now cheap enough for the middle class (12 thousand pesos, about 220 dollars).

 In the last 20 years, we have gradually mechanized the farm using hand plows (sort of a large rototiller) and of course irrigation for the winter harvest that uses pumps. 

And over the last 20 year we have switched from hand harvesting and using our small thresher to just renting a harvester thresher to do the harvest. 

 Most of the local farmers we given their traditional land years ago, and by law we can only control a limited amount of land. So we subcontract our organic rice business to local faremrs.

 The problem? They are getting old, and their kids are now educated and moving to the city. There is a danger of losing that farm land to developers, such as the big solar panel company that is rengint/buying up good rice land to put solar panels.

Sigh. 

But more reccently, the local are renting backhoes to dig up below the dirt to look for gold.

Considering that the price of ferilizer and diesel has gone up, and big businesses are busy buying cheap rice from overseas which keeps the price of rice down, some farmers figure they might want to get money from these non farming schemes.

Sigh.