why Organic rice helps the poor

Both Joy and Chano are in Manila at two trade fairs all week. 

Chano is there selling our organic rice brand grown in NuevaEcija, mainly grown on our own fields and the farms of our local contract farmers.

Joy is representing the newer organic rice brand grown by small farmers in a coop in nearby Bulacan (that she set up with the help of the Dept of Agriculture who saw how we set up organic rice growing in our area and so asked her to set up the project to help poor farmers there ).

Joy is hoping to sell the coop's rice overseas (i.e. Singapore, HongKong, etc which means higher standards and lots of paperwork) but Chano has enough local business he doesn't want to expand.

Ironically, in our area, many of our contract farmers work the land that they got under land reform many years ago, but that our family used to own. 

Many now want to sell the land back to us, since by owing their own land they could afford to get their kids educated, and the kids no longer want to be farmers, preferring the "easier" and more lucrative life as an OFW or working in nearby Manila.

Legally there is a limit on how much one can own, so we can't buy it back, but we can help supervise the farmers on the fields that were bought as an investment by "balikbayan" returnees, who then hire tenant farmers, mainly from the Visayas, to work their investment but aren't experts in rice cultivation.

 Another result of the farmers' now educated kids not being willing to do the back breaking work of rice farming is that the "traditional" methods of farming are gradually being mechanized: a "handplow"  (large roto tiller) is being used instead of a water buffalo, and we have a thresher for our fields and the fields of our contract farmers to separate the rice: and now we are adding a harvester with thresher. (much of the land is still harvested by hand). In the future, planting the rice seedlings will be done by machinery too...

all of these machines run on gasoline or diesel, of course.

something to remember the next time you see rich white European girls with braids (or clueless ex bartenders from Brooklyn) saying we need to get rid of fossil fuel: Uh, you mean go back to the (methane farting) water buffalo, the back breaking labour of hand planting of rice seedlings by hand and the similarly back breaking method of harvesting the rice by hand? And just ignore the fact that the traditional wet method of rice farming that floods the fields to kill weeds  produces lots of methane?

And then there are health problems. Can you pronounce "Schistosomiasis" children?

Mechanization and other efficient methods of rice cultivation will be good for richer farmers, but not for the smaller cash poor farmers, who often have to sell their rice cheaply at harvest time to buy seeds and to pay the bills for the previous harvest. Hence the coops and sub-contracts help the farmers by providing seedlings, equipment etc. that they as small farmers could not afford.


Right now, encouraging farmers into growing organic rice (which sells at a higher price) will help keep many small farmers on the land and improve their standard of living. 

For example, when we were in Singapore, one of Joy's contacts had a nanny who worked there because her husband couldn't support the family with farm income (she made 300 dollars a month as a nanny, but he made only 200 dollars a month on his farm in the Visayas). Which explains why so many Filipinos get overseas jobs. The friend in Singapore asked her to try to start organic rice project in the Visayas to help the family, and she promised to ask the Dept of Agriculture if they could help set it up.

this is the dirty little secret behind all those migrants: poverty. 

you can see why the Pope etc. want to open the borders to help them: But the way it is being done in the US and Europe now is to exploit them and exploit the host countries, since many of these "migrants" are not refugees but unemployed (and unskilled) young men or families who end up on welfare.

and one hopes that Trumpieboy will figure a way for job recruiters to hire all those Central Americans in the near future, after the border is made secure: because all those NGO's are essentially helping smugglers and human traffickers getting rich under the guise of "helping the poor"

This ignores that there are alternatives: that they should be trying to set up a way to do this legally, as is done for the hundreds of thousands of foreign workers in the Middle East.

the bad news about encouraging migration is that is destroys families.

a recent book on the Overseas Filipino is making some waves in the literary world: Jason DeParlo A Good provider is one who leaves.

no, I haven't read it yet (will probably listen to the audio on Scribd in the near future).




so anyway, we might be evil capitalists, but our family is trying to improve things in our own small way.

Chano is planning to try to increase to three crops a year on some of the lower fields (that are irrigated). Right now, one can get a good harvest during the main season, but the second harvest is "iffy" if one doesn't irrigate. we have irrigation available so can get two harvests on our lower fields (but not on the fields on a low hill).  Three harvests a year is common in Vietnam, but so far not done much here. Whether or not it will work, or be cost effective (i.e. given the high irrigation fees) is another question.