by PETER JNR RABUL | FACEBOOK (edited)
I was sitting in the bus listening to one of our friends telling us about a situation she had back at home.
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Her adopted daughter had fallen pregnant by her boyfriend. A very common situation in PNG.
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So they packed her things and took her in their vehicle to her boyfriend's place. Over there they happen to find out that the boyfriend is "unemployed". I usually get pissed with girls who give themselves to unemployed boys. What kind of future do you want??? But its none of my business right? Wrong. Its every body's business to speak up so girls can start using their coconuts.
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Anyway, the boy happens to be from Rigo. So according to her mother, the solution was simple... Put them on the next plane to Port Moresby and they can go live in the village. Money is in the village. The boy can go fishing and feed his family. Sounds easy. But its not. And that is the point in this article.
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The Purpose of this Article is to highlight a subject that is worth discussion: How Will You Survive in the Village???
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What are some survival skills you need to have to make it through the first 6 months in the village? How much money can sustain you in the first 6 months? What are the 5 main agricultural crops will you plant that will be harvested within that 6 months? What tools will you need? Do you have enough land and seeds to sustain your family? What Business will you establish? How much capital and resources do you need to start?
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These are some of the main questions each one of us must answer. If all the answers are clear in our head and we have budgeted for the resources then we should do fine.
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My parents have a great 10 years experience they can always share on how they came to Munum Village and established themselves. The struggles were real. The decisions were critical. And by God's grace I am here now and ready to establish my Organics Company on the foundation they built.
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I know many will retire and go back to the village, typically thinking of buying a PMV and building a trade store. If you are a Public Servant with more than 30 years in service to your country, have you ever thought about starting an Organic Agriculture Company? Here's a tip...
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When extreme floods hit Baimuru a few years back, do you know what the Government sent???
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RICE, FLOUR and OIL.
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That's right. Not Coffee, not Cocoa and not Copra.
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When droughts hit the highlands region, did they survive off their coffee gardens?
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In the morning people eat rice or flour, at lunch time they might probably eat a pie, doughnut, fish flour, sausage flour, flour balls, cakes, scones, almost something made of flour.
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So have you ever thought about tapping into the rice and flour industry???
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I will. I definitely will. In fact, I have already started rice farming and flour will be next. So if you are with me to export Organic Rice & Flour across the country and across the world, consider this as your retirement package.
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The start up capital is small. Tools required are the basics. Labour don't need to be highly skilled and you can start almost immediately.
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Now going back to the story at the opening onset, remember, the girls parents thought sending the girl to the village was a simple and quick fix to a common social problem. And i'm assuming that's what a lot of City Dwellers and the Working Class think. But just as you can see from our little field trip, there is a lot of Time, Thinking, Strategic Planning and Resourcing just to build a foundation. But if you strike a great Agricultural concept, you will do great.
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Remember, there is so much uncultivated land in your backyard and back at home in your village. Don't think Farming is only for Agriculturalists, its for anybody who has uncultivated land around their house.
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There is a common belief that "Agriculture is for losers". It has been reinforced by parents, especially City Dwelling parents. They threaten their kids by saying, "Sapos yu no skul gut na yu fail, bai mi salim yu go back lo ples na wok garden." My dad used something similar while I was growing up in Pom saying we'd come back to the village and climb coconuts for the rest of our lives.
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The Threat worked for our short term goal of doing well in school but it gave us the wrong impression that farming was only for failures.
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So here's a quick fix: Tell yourself and your kids, the first ever and original Gardener, was God. He intended for Adam and Eve to multiply and create more copies of his prototype. Eventually the whole planet will become a Global Paradise. And each of us will be managing our section of Garden Eden. So you and your kids should start working on your section of Garden Eden. Start this year.
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If you really want to be financially free and rich, go back to the village, and convert all that uncultivated land into rice and wheat farms.
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So if you are going back to the village. Consider the things you have read in this article. And may God Bless you, for returning to the Original Project he started for us and gave us to manage. - Via Garamut News.
By MICHAEL MAKABENTA ALUNAN | BUSINESS MIRROR (edited)
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol’s proposal to “export” Filipino private sector-led rice-farming systems to Papua New Guinea may have raised condescending eyebrows from economists and agriculture experts, but his novel strategy can perhaps open up vast potentials and unintended opportunities.
Thinking out of box? Piñol, a boxing aficionado early on in his career, even as a former journalist, long before he joined politics, was thinking out of the box when he proposed to bring high-end Filipino rice-farming systems to Papua New Guinea.
Only over a week ago, Piñol went to Papua New Guinea, a British Commonwealth Realm, and got its Prime Minister Peter O’Neill to commit to come over to meet with President Duterte sometime in May and possibly cement bilateral economic commitments, followed by a treaty that can institutionalize any mutually beneficial arrangements.
However, top-notch economists and agricultural planners led no less by former Socioeconomic Secretary Dr. Cielito Habito and former Agriculture Secretary William Dar have criticized Piñol, asking two valid questions:
1) Why focus on “rice self-sufficiency” when we cannot compete against Thailand’s and Vietnam’s production costs of rice at P5 to P6 per kilo against P10 to P12 per kilo in the Philippines?
Many economists would therefore advise to give up the elusive goal of self-sufficiency, and settle instead for food security while focusing on higher incomes from other high-value cash crops and livelihood activities; and
2) Why go to Papua New Guinea when we have more problems locally?
Can’t do away with rice yet. Speaking on March 22 before the 2017 Philippine Agricultural Journalists Inc. and San Miguel Corp.’s BINHI Agricultural Journalism Awards, Piñol argued we cannot simply abandon rice self-sufficiency, unless Filipinos change their diets and reduce their rice consumption.
For the poor, who survive on a hand-to-mouth existence, 80 percent to 90 percent of their income is spent on food, the bulk on rice to fill their hungry stomachs and less on real food.
A study by Professor Jeyakumar, a rice dietary expert and one-time fellow of the International Rice Research Institute, noted that obesity of Westerners like the Americans is caused by almost 40 percent in high-fat diets, compared to Asians, whose average diets are composed of 67 percent carbohydrates, mostly rice, and only 21 percent fats.
For the dirt poor, rice may even share as much as 90 percent of their diet.
As our traditional sources of rice imports, Vietnam and Thailand are also vulnerable to climate change with Thailand devastated by a tsunami years back, Piñol claims we must continue aiming for rice self-sufficiency and developing alternative sources like Papua New Guinea.
It’s no “Guinea pig,” it’s real! Piñol argues the rice-farming potentials in Papua New Guinea are real and tremendous based on actual pilot results. This makes Piñol’s idea no longer a “guinea-pig experiment,” referring to how scientists use rodents or laboratory rats, popularly called “guinea pigs.”
Actual rice-farming experiments done in Papua New Guinea yielded 8.5 metric tons per hectare, even without fertilizers, even double our national average yield of 4MT per hectare, he revealed in conversations while seated at the BINHI awards.
The reasons for this are 1) Papua New Guinea is blessed with good rainfall with its remaining lush forests and watersheds as evidenced by its vast rivers as wide as a kilometer, and easily diverted to feed irrigation canals; and 2) Papua New Guinea’s farm soils are vastly virgin and rich, unlike Philippine rice lands that are already toxic from four to five decades of chemical fertilizer and pesticide usage.
All the land to offer. Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neil instantly offered 100,000 hectares for planting even starting tomorrow, but can develop easily 2 million hectares in government lands for rice farming with irrigation.
“PNG has only 8 million people and over 46.28 million hectares of land, mostly forest and agricultural lands, compared to our 105 million and 30 million hectares, respectively,” Piñol said.
Rice farming will mutually benefit both countries. Rice farming will be done exclusively by the private sector, but can tap Filipino workers.
Any excess produce can be exported cheap to the Philippines, and any excess exported worldwide.
For Papua New Guinea, producing its own rice is novel, as it had long been sourcing rice from former surrogate colonizer, Australia, which allegedly imports cheap rice from Vietnam, then sells it to Papua New Guinea by as much as P100 per kilo.
Pursuing the Papua New Guinea option is logical for Piñol, as we have limited rice lands of 4.8 million hectares. In fact, only 3.9 million hectares are planted to rice, of which only 1.2 million hectares have irrigation, the remaining 2.7 million hectares are rain-fed areas producing only once a year at low yields.
New sites, new sights? As an island archipelago, we have fewer flat lands suitable to rice producing thrice a year, but more sloping mountain areas with mixed eco-systems, including adjacent marine and mangrove areas.
Piñol added traditional rice sites like Luzon and Bicol are ravaged yearly by 21 typhoons a year.
We won’t abandon these areas, but we need to develop new sites like Palawan, Samar, Agusan, Zamboanga, Davao, Basilan and Soccsksargen and, of course, in Papua New Guinea.
Piñol declared earlier that even former warzones in Mindanao and portions of military reservations like Fort Magsaysay’s 46,000 hectares can be converted to production areas.
This will realize the biblical phrase of “converting swords to ploughshares,” which we can call transforming arms into farms.
While Piñol is confident of hitting 100-percent rice self-sufficiency by 2020, he says the growing population will overtake our capacity to produce.
Thus, the need to develop new sites, and the urgency to keep our sights on new ideas, new technologies and even achieve unintended opportunities, which, ironically, are the much intended targets of our economists and experts.
As we gain from new sites, old sites may slowly shift to non-rice, but more profitable commodities and other agro-processing ventures.
But the problem is, the PNG government doesn’t have even 100,000 hectares of land, let alone 2 million hectares. So whose land are they going to use – and how many Filipino rice farmers are we going to allow into the country? – Via Garamut News.
