Our granddaughter is in the USA teaching a summer seminar for high school kids about economic matters. She loves teaching and is hoping to teach at an international school in Thailand next year.
International schools are high schools that are accredited by overseas institutions: Rubys schools are accredited by American institution, and her degree/training is in the American method of teaching (lots of thinking/writing/research). Luckily she is quite adept at catching the kids using AI.
When she comes back, I told her that she needs to teach me how to use AI, because we old folks are still in the stone age when it comes to computers.
She was teaching at an internationally credited school in Manila this year, but she only had a part time job there. We hoped she would have stayed there for another year before going to a job offer at a school in Macao (that offered her a job but she needed more experience before they would hire her), but with the political situation with China, we are actually happy if she goes to Thailand for two years to teach English literature and composition, which should be safer than living in Macao/China or here in Luzon near a military base in case war breaks out.
No, I really don't think China would invade Luzon, but the world is so crazy one never knows.
Joy is going to Manila today to testify about organic farming. She works with the Dept of Agri here, supervising a farm coop in nearby Bulacan, teaching how to grow organic rice and organizing processing, selling, etc... organic rice requires hard work for the farmers, but sells for a higher price than ordinary rice...
Years ago, she got a grant from the GoldmanSachs 10thousand women project, that taught middle level women how to run a business etc.
After that, since Kuya was able to run the farm business here with local help, she started working on a project in nearby Bulacan (where her parents had a farm), to teach and supervise farmers there wishing to grow organic rice and vegetables.
President Marcos has made the agricultural sector a priority in his policies, This is harder than it sounds: If you let the price of rice go up, the farmers will make a profit, but if you import more rice and lower tariffs on imported rice, the lower price will benefit the poor in the cities, not to mention the rich businessmen who will import the rice.
Sigh.
With land reform, most of the farmers were allowed to buy their land, and the amount of land one can own is limited (Most of the farmers who grow rice for us own land that was owned by Lolo's father years ago). The problem is that now the young can get an education, and are moving away, so there is a dearth of people willing to work on farms (our farmland here is tilled by people from Joy's home area in the Visayas, which is poorer than our area).
So as the farmers age, their kids don't want to stay, so they will sell their land to rich folk, often Balikbayan, returning retired Filipinos, who will have someone farm it for them, or maybe build a house on the land, since with the improved roads, it is only two to three hours to Manila.
There is also a project to buy or rent rice land to put up solar panels. I haven't heard if they are still pressuring farmer to do this as they were two years ago when the covid crisis had caused a lot of economic hardship, but with Manila nearby, and with the economy improving, the need for electricity has gone up.
Whether this is good or bad I can argue both ways, but when Kuya was approached with the offer, he also had thugs looking for our house to discuss selling the land to them. Welcome to the Philippines.
When I moved here 20 years ago, the farmers used our thresher, but still planted and harvested by hand. Now we rent a thresher/harvester to do the work, although we still solar dry the rice. We also have pretty well transitioned from waterbuffalo to handplows (sort of a large rototiller) to prepare the fields. The next step: machinery to plant the seedlings.
We have two crops a year: The main season, you plant seedlings carefully spaced, but we just sow seeds by hand for the second crop, which requires a lot of money for irrigation since it is dry season.
With decent irrigation and enough fertilizer, we could get three crops a year by planting only seedling, but right now there is not enough water or profit to make that feasible.
Using the dry/wet way of growing rice (rather than constant flooding) has decreased water use (and cut methane emissions, although increasing Nitrousoxide emissions).
But all it takes is a drought or a typhoon and voila the crop is lost. Sigh.
Right now, it is the start of the monsoon, meaning thunderstorms/rain every afternoon evening, and soon the planting will start.
But I am retired, so I just sit and watch everyone else do the hard work.
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