Climate Change, The World At Large And I As Prophet Of Boom – Regenerative Agriculture

None of the PH Presidentiables is talking about what more havoc Climate Change can bring to Agriculture, the #1 industry in the Philippines. That is not surprising, as even the #1 university of agriculture in the country, UP Los Baños, is hardly talking about this universal danger!

In next May or June, with a new President of my country, current Secretary of Agriculture William Dar may be replaced (I hope not) – but this current overall farming-related problem will not be replaced: Chemical Agriculture (CA) wreaking havoc on the environment by generating greenhouse gases (GHGs).

How large is the GHGs contribution of CA? ANN says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says (Author Not Named, undated, “Greenhouse Gas Reduction,” iaea.org):

Agriculture is both a victim of and a contributor to climate change. On the one hand, agricultural activities contribute approximately 30 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, mainly due to the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and animal wastes.

The IAEA says 30% is what CA contributes to the total GHGs of the world – If we worry only about so much destruction brought about by modern typhoons and not about what magnifies their furies, we are deceiving ourselves.

To fight climate change, as much as we can, we must do something about our CA practices!

On Facebook, Ramon Yedra, Director of Agribusiness and Marketing Assistance Service (AMAS) of the Department Of Agriculture (DA), shares “For Young Filipinos, #Futureofwork Is Farming,” the article by Kay Calpo Lugtu (21 April 2022, Manila Times, manilatimes.net). But I say, “For Young Filipinos, #Futureofwork is Regenerative Agriculture (RAg)! And organic agriculture is RAg.”

I say the AMAS has to exuberantly encouragethe youth to go into agriculture because it is a dismal career.

Why? Because state colleges & universities (SCUs) have not been teaching the youth how to make Agriculture lucrative! And so, just as our favorite farm/folk song goes on and on, “Planting rice is never fun!”

To make agriculture attractive to Filipinos, let us make it not only well-paying but also patriotic – by educating citizens not only about costs & returns, but also about how agriculture produces GHGs that directly cause climate change.

Why not the Agricultural Credit & Policy Council (ACPC) providing very easy loans to attract farmers to practice RAg? The ACPC will then be the Godmother of Primate Change!

In the last 113 years, since the founding of UP Los Baños in 1909, our SCUs have taught farmers to be good farmers but not good businessmen! So farming remains essentially a win-or-lose job. And they never teach how CA generates GHGs, so we continue practicing CA.

The problem is not with the youth – the problem is that agriculture is not an attractively high-paying job! And that is where RAg comes in.
(“Young Filipinos” image from Rappler, Rappler.com)

Just a simple arithmetic – RAg reduces fertilizer costs to minimum while it reduces GHGs to maximum; therefore, returns from RAg is maximum even as the generation of GHGs is at minimum.

RAg should be Agriculture’s RAGE!@517