Development Communication: Catalyst of Socio-Economic Change

                 Development Communication

Part 1: Development Communication - Catalyst of Socio-Economic Change

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature - School on Blog  

What is Development Communication?
Development Communication is recognizing the power of communication as a catalyst for social development. it is also the utilization of existent communication tools and applicable theories for result-driven strategies for the advancement of society.

University of the Philippines at Los Baños: seat of the country's agricultural research and training.  

• Development Communication is a type of marketing and public opinion research that is used specifically to develop effective communication or as the use of communication to promote social development.
• Purposive communication intended for a specific target audience that allows for the translation of information into action resulting in a higher quality of life.
• The improvement of a community using information and technology and the community's ability to maintain the created ideal state without compromising its environment and resources.
• It is the voluntary involvement of a group of people in a development activity with full knowledge of its purpose that will allow them to grow individually and as a community.
• The process of eliciting positive change (social, political, economic, moral, environmental, etc) through an effective exchange of pertinent information in order to induce people to action.
• Development communication extends to include: information dissemination on developmental schemes/projects, communication for eliciting positive change, interactivity, feedback on developmental issues, feedback/reverse communication for eliciting change. On development side, sustainability issues need to be given proper importance vis-a-vis economic development.
• The practice of systematically applying the processes, strategies, and principles of communication to bring about positive social change.

The term "Development Communication" was first coined in 1972 by Nora C. Quebral, who defines the field as "the art and science of human communication linked to a society's planned transformation from a state of poverty to one of dynamic socio-economic growth that makes for greater equity and the larger unfolding of individual potential."

Original building which housed UPLB's Farm and Home Development program. Author was among the pioneers of this special graduate course in 1962-1963 under the leadership of  then Dioscorro Umali, Thomas Flores, Leo de Guzman, Roger Cuyno, Perla Tagumpay, Nora Quebral, Diosdado Castro, et al. 

 Some approaches include:

• information dissemination and education,
• behavior change,
• social marketing,
• social mobilization,
• media advocacy,
• communication for social change, and
• participatory development communication.

Different schools of development communication have arisen in different places.

1. The "Bretton Woods school of development communication" arose with the economic strategies outlined in the Marshall Plan after WW2, and the establishment of the Bretton Woods system and of the WB and IMF in 1944. Due to his pioneering influence in the field, Everett Rogers has often been termed the "father of development communication."
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Originally, the paradigm involved production and planting of development in indigenous and uncivilized societies. This western approach to development communication was criticized early on, especially by Latin American researchers because it tended to locate the problem in the underdeveloped nation rather than its unequal relations with powerful economies. There was also an assumption that Western models of industrial capitalism are appropriate for all parts of the world. Many projects for development communication failed to address the real underlying problems in poor countries such as lack of access to land, agricultural credits and fair market prices.
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The world bank currently defines development communication as the "integration of strategic communication in development projects" based on a clear understanding of indigenous realities. Institutions associated with the Bretton Woods school include:

PHOTO: Dr Anselmo S Cabigan served as director for Research and Extension of the National Food Authority until he retired to join the academe. Extension draws the link between and among the stakeholders of the state agency in stabilizing price and supply of basic food. Similarly development communication aims at bringing in unity and understanding among various sectors of society.

• UNESCO
• United Nations (FAO),
• the Rockefeller Foundation,
• the Department of International Development of the United Kingdom, 
• the Ford Foundation.

                                                                    

2. Latin America
The Latin American School of Development traces its history back further than the Bretton Woods school, emerging in the 1940s with the efforts of Colombia's Radio Sutatenza and Bolivia's Radios Minera. These stations were the first to use participatory and educational rural radio approaches to empowering the marginalized. In effect, they have since served as the earliest models for participatory broadcasting efforts around the world.

3. India
The history of organized development communication in India can be traced to rural radio broadcasts in the 1940s. As is logical, the broadcasts used indigenous languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Kannada.

PHOTO: Dr Dioscoro L Umali (1917 – 1992) served as Dean of UPLB and became the regional Director of FAO in Southeast Asia. He continued to serve as consultant of IRRI after his retirement.

Independent India's earliest organized experiments in development communication started with Community Development projects initiated by the union government in 1950's. Radio played an equally important role in reaching messages to the masses. Universities and other educational institutions - especially the agricultural universities, through their extension networks - and international organizations under the UN umbrella carried the dev-comm experiments further.

4. Africa
The African school of development communication sprang from the continent's post-colonial and communist movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Development communication in Anglophone Africa saw the use of Radio and theatre for community education, adult literacy, health and agricultural education.

5. University of the Philippines at Los Baños
The systematic study and practice of Development Communication in the Philippines began in the 1970s with the pioneering work of Nora C Quebral who, in 1972 became the first to come up with the term "Development Communication." In at least some circles within the field, it is Quebral who is recognized as the "Mother" of Development Communication.

Aspects of development communication which the CDC has extensively explored include Development Broadcasting and Telecommunications, Development Journalism, Educational Communication, Science Communication, Strategic Communication, and Health Communication.

Mother of DevCom in the Philippines. She helped in launching DC as an academic discipline and she has taught many renown development communication professionals. Her academic base since the 1960′s has been the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). She coined the term “development communication”, which she defined as: “the art and science of human communication linked to a society’s planned transformation from a state of poverty to one of dynamic socio-economic growth that makes for greater equity and the larger unfolding of individual potential.”

6. Cybernetics approach
Another area of exploration for the CDC at UPLB is the aspect of development communication relating to the information sciences, the decision sciences, and the field of knowledge management. In 1993, as part of the then Institute of Development Communication’s Faculty papers series, Alexander Flor wrote a paper on environmental communication that, among other things, proposed a definition of Development Communication expanded from the perspective of cybernetics and general systems theory:

If information counters entropy and societal breakdown is a type of entropy, then there must be a specific type of information that counters societal entropy. The exchange of such information – be it at the individual, group, or societal level – is called development communication.

7. The Participatory Development Communication school
Focusing the involvement of the community in development efforts, the evolution of the Participatory Development Communication School involved collaboration between First World and Third World development communication organizations.

References
1.Quebral, Nora C. (1973/72). "What Do We Mean by ‘Development Communication’". International Development Review 15 (2): 25–28.

2. Quebral, Nora (23 November 2001). "Development Communication in a Borderless World". Paper presented at the national conference-workshop on the undergraduate development communication curriculum, "New Dimensions, Bold Decisions". Continuing Education Center, UP Los Baños: Department of Science Communication, College of Development Communication, University of the Philippines Los Baños. pp. 15–28.

3.Manyoso. Linje (March 2006). "Manifesto for Development Communication: Nora C. Quebral and the Los Baños School of Development Communication". Asian Journal of Communication 16 (1): 79–99. doi:10.1080/01292980500467632

4.Avrind Singhal, Everett M. Rogers (1999). Entertainment-education: A Communication Strategy for Social Change , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0805833501.

5.Flor, Alexander (1993) (Monograph). Upstream and Downstream Interventions in Environmental Communication. Institute of Development Communication.

6.Thussu, Daya Kishan 2000). International Communication: Continuity and Change. London: Arnold.

Part 2:  Development Communication: Applied Communication at the Grassroots

Dr. Abe V. Rotor

Afro-Asian Institute, Tel-Aviv, Israel

(From the Lectures of Dr. Chanoch Jacobsen, Professors Shimon Zuckerman, Shulamit Elfassy, Michel Isaak, and Gershon Tabor)

  

Israel: Wailing Wall; old city of Jerusalem  

 

Students from different countries attend a course in Development 

Communications at Afro-Asian Institute in Tel-Aviv, Israel, 1992.

 

“A genuine meeting of minds may result if both parties in interest will concede to the other side the honor of believing, at least as an initial assumption, that its point of view is not merely vicious or silly.”

- George H. Sabine

The four basic elements in every communication process

• The communication source, the person whose ideas or meanings are to be transferred to another person.
• communication receiver, the person/s to whom the ideas or meaning are to be transferred.
• message which can be transferred from the source to the receiver.
• the message has to travel through a channel or medium in order to successfully make the passage from source to receiver.

The six steps or stages in the process

Stage 1: Creation
The person as the communication source conceives of an idea which he wants to transmit to someone else. Clear yourself about what you want to communicate. Only when the source knows clearly what he wants to communicate is it likely that the receiver will understand him.

Stage 2: Encoding
Meanings and ideas are structures of the mind. Encode your ideas into symbols which you are sure will be correctly understood by the receiver.

Stage 3: Transmission
An idea or meaning which has been encoded into symbols is called a message. The word symbols have to be either spoken, or written and displayed; the gestures have to be shown; the music has to be performed, and so on with other symbols.

Stage 4: Reception
Environmental conditions have a direct bearing on fidelity. But beyond that, fidelity depends on which and how many of the receiver’s five senses are activated to receive the message: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or smelling. (The fidelity of our senses is in this order.)

Stage 5: Decoding
The receiver, having received the encoded message, must now decode it in order to comprehend its meaning. One can not decode a message whose symbols one does not recognize. It does happen that we receive messages which seem incomprehensible to us, as when someone speaks to us in language we do not know. In such cases we usually try to communicate to the source that we do not understand him

Stage 6: Assimilation (final stage in the simple one-way communication process)
In order to “ make sense” of the decoded message, to understand it, the receiver must relate it to what he already knows and assimilate it within the total information available to him. The more life experience a person has had, the more likely it is that his store of knowledge will contain elements with which he can make sense out of a new ideas and meanings.

To summarize, the communication process involves four basic elements and six stages.

The four elements are: 1.) The source, 2.) The receiver, 3.) The message, and 4.) The channel.

The six stages of the process are: 1.) Creation, 2.) Encoding 3.) Transmission, 4.) Reception, 5.) Decoding, 6.) Assimilation

At the core of all extension work lies the process of communication. Indeed, the very term “extension work” was chosen by its originators to convey the idea of communication lines extending beyond the boundaries of the universities to include the rural population in the surrounding countryside, and urban marginal communities.

All extension workers, however diverse their specific fields of expertise maybe, must be highly skilled communicators, because they stand and work at a crucial intersection of a widespread communication network. This network encompasses the rural population, the various service centers in towns and cities such as markets, supplies, experiment stations, educational facilities, and local as well as governmental agencies. ~

Posted by Abe V. Rotor at 9:25 PM 
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3 comments:

Hannah Nalupa said...

As a Communication Arts student, we define communication as an exchange of information. An exchange meaning there is two-way communication. In the form of communication mentioned in this blog, I would like to add FEEDBACK to the communication process. The process does not just end in assimilation. With feedback, the process becomes a cycle. It is in this part of the communication process that we realize whether there has been an effect to the receiver the message that was transmitted and know how it was understood or decoded.

NALUPA, Hannah Kattrina T.
4CA5March 7, 2011 at 11:23 PM 
Mia Joanna Reyes said...

"Only when the source knows clearly what he wants to communicate is it likely that the receiver will understand him." I agree with this statement, firstly, one cannot deliver their messages clearly if they themselves do not have a clear idea of what is on their mind. Communicating does not just mean speaking, it means sending out important messages to individuals and making a difference.
"Encode your ideas into symbols" It is like semiotics, when it comes to signs, the meanings are already known by the individuals. Like in development communication, there is not only communication to improve the society but signs like if you place a "recycle" symbol, it would be understood by people but the thing is people tend to ignore these signs so its important that symbols are made sure to be received by audiences.

"An idea or meaning which has been encoded into symbols is called a message." You need to really show people these signs and have to catch attention and to send these symbols verbally and through actions, we have to encode then transmit these symbols which becomes the main message one is trying to send to its audience. "fidelity depends on which and how many of the receiver’s five senses are activated to receive the message: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or smelling." Of course in order to send your messages, you need to have all these five senses, to communicate and send messages, you need to reach to all these senses. Like in development communication, you not only have to act but also perform these ways to send your message and trigger these senses.

"One can not decode a message whose symbols one does not recognize." the need to explain these symbols and messages is important since how much you communicate and want responsive actions, if people do not understand the meanings of these messages you would get to nowhere. As we have studied in development communication, it is important to make people aware of the things, signs, messages around them so that they would be able to act and fight against problems and issues of society.

" The more life experience a person has had, the more likely it is that his store of knowledge will contain elements with which he can make sense out of a new ideas and meanings."

Assimilation, one step that is the most important for there to be success and progress. One would not understand if they have not had experience. It is important for there to be participation of others.

Development communication has helped many individuals to take action and have knowledge of the issues around us and move to solve these. Especially with lessons I have learned in class, I was enlightened and now aware of the moves and steps in order to be a part of improving and making our society better.
Mia Joanna B. Reyes
4ca5
USTMarch 8, 2011 at 7:17 PM 
Ria Salaveria said...

A process is defined as something that has steps in order for the beginning to reach the end. In communication, there's a sender and a receiver. A sender is the one that formulates the message, encodes it and then sends it. On the other hand, the receiver is the one that receives the message, decodes it and then absorbs or assimilates it. 

Part 3 - Extension - Catalyst in Rural Development

How do we differentiate Education from Extension? 

How does media support extension today?

Dr Abe V Rotor

STOU professor on live television lecture.

Nationwide radio and television centralized control panel, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University campus, Thailand. There are more than 250,000 students enrolled in this university without walls. Another Thai open university has one-half million students. Lower photo: Printed extension materials.

Interview: Dr Abe Rotor (left) and Professor Suchin Phongsak of 

Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Bangkok, Thailand 

The author was visiting professor in STOU in 2010

Your program:
If it is of high quality, people will respect you.
If it is relevant, people will need you.
If it is measurable, people will trust you.
If it is innovative, people will follow you.

It is a great honor and pleasure to share with you my views and experiences on the concerns of extension in grassroots education and technology transfer. I will concentrate on agriculture since this is the universal thrust of extension. Besides, agriculture is the base of our economy and eighty percent of our population directly or indirectly depends on it. The following are the most important concerns of extension in the Philippines:

1. There is a wide gap between available technology and the level or degree of field application.

This gap is traced to limited resources and opportunities as well as attitudinal problems. The actual farm yield is only 40 percent of the potential yield, and 25 to 30 percent of experiment station yield.

It means therefore that the problem lies not on the lack of technology but on the poor use of technology at the farmers' fields. Based on economic farm yield, our annual production of palay will increase from the present figure of 9 million MT to 14 million MT. We would then become a consistent net exporter of rice like Thailand, the world's top rice exporter today. The aim of extension in this case is the effective and prompt transfer of the technology that narrows down the yield gap.

2. Adoption of technology on the farm should be tied closely with agricultural business.

In a dialogue on the present rice problem conducted by the Senate's committee on science and technology, the Philippine Rice Research Institute or PHILRICE testified that rice production in experimental fields has leveled up to 5 MT/ha while farmers are getting yields of only 3 MT/ ha or below.

It is favorable market conditions that stimulate production and enhance the plowing back of income to pay for the technology and hired labor in farming. Farming should be therefore an enterprise rather than a mere means of livelihood. Most farms in the country are run by subsistent families. Extension should be able to design a balanced program that has the integrated technology and agribusiness components.

3. Appropriate technology in developing countries is more of innovation than modernization.

Technology builds up an existing practice. We take the case of "payatak" rice farming in Samar, a very traditional practice, almost zero tillage. Here, the field is trampled by carabaos, planted with old rice seedlings, then left entirely to nature. The yield obtained is very low but there are certain favorable aspects of this practice.

• The family food needs are supplemented by carabao milk and curds, fish, frog and snails. These edible species live naturally on the wetland and survive the short summer in the carabao wallows.

• Ecology balance is contributed largely by minimal disturbance of biological and physical conditions of the farm.

• Farm by-products and wastes, such as hay and manure, are put to use.

• Labor is maximized, provided by members the family and immediate community.

Extension should be able to first identify these good points and preserve them. The introduced technology should look at both increased production and these above benefits as its objectives.

4. Technology should be recognized in the context of both research and enterprise systems developed through intermediate stages.

The research system bridges the laboratory and experimental field, whereas the enterprise system bridges the farm and the market. Both systems are linked by partnership and collaboration among scientists, engineers, agriculturists, farmers, etc. The idea is to provide channels and a network through which the product of research becomes ultimately useful by the consuming public.

Extension should likewise be aware that modern technology is intensive, and too often, expensive.

(1) infrastructures later turn out as "white elephants;"

(2) research is sophisticated requiring expensive facilities, consultants and staff;

(3) on mechanization, combines get stuck in rice paddies; grains cake or germinate in silos and bins;

(4) hired labor disputes results in strikes and court cases; and

(5) big investments/capital end up eating operational funds putting the project to a stop.

The once ultra modern Food Terminal Incorporated (FTI) attests to the fact that progress is not synonymous to modern technology. FTI is not an isolated case of non-performing assets of the government worth billions of pesos.

Extension should be aware of the necessity to undertake a careful and accurate assessment of situations and projections, and put behind seemingly beautiful package deals offered by other countries, including grants and donations.

Extension should be instrumental in pilot or module testing before embarking into full adoption of modern technology.

5. Productivity of shrinking farms can be increased through crop and product diversification.

Land reform broke up large estates, including sugarlands and coconut lands. Subdivision of these properties resulted in uneconomic farm sizes. There are approaches to increase productivity, such as multiple cropping, agro-processing and integration of related projects. There are diversification model for coconut lands.

The ordinary coconut farmer can indulge in the following activities, namely

(a) copra making,

(b) inter-cropping with cash crops such as grains and legumes, and

(c) animal production (goat, carabao and cattle raised between coconut trees).

To accomplish all this, extension will have to bring in the services of government agencies as well as those of the private sector. Farmers will be organized into cooperatives as a pre-condition of collective production and marketing.

Hypothetically, integration is of two kinds, horizontal and vertical, and the combination of both. This HV integration model applies in areas where the principal crop is rice, corn or sugarcane. It can also apply in non-traditional areas. Extension should be able to accomplish farm plans and programs based on integration concepts and models. But it is advisable that successful projects be used as models.

6. Holistic development considers the major division of the geographic profile and recognizes their ecological interrelationship.

Twentieth century agriculture started with the opening of frontiers of production; pushing development towards marginal areas - uplands, hillsides, swamps and sea coasts. This movement was followed by the manipulation of nature on the species level, creating desirable varieties of plants and breeds of animals at the same time improving their agronomy and husbandry. Recently, agriculture has started producing Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) - plants and animals - through what we term today as genetic engineering.

Today, with our high population rate of 2.8 percent, which is one of the highest in the world, marginal settlements have mushroomed in coastal areas, hillsides and suburbs of urban centers.

Extension should help identify the sectoral and ecological divisions of the geographic profile of these areas, and design programs based on their peculiar physical and biological characteristics, and on their effects to the whole system.

We are witnessing many cases where destructive upland and hillside farming has led to erosion, which in turn, caused siltation and decreased water supply. Decreased river flow and sinking water table result in salt water intrusion through backflow and seepage destroying farm lands as a consequence. Pangasinan, Pampanga, Bulacan and the Ilocos provinces have reported cases of salination. We are also aware that reduced vegetative cover leads to changes in the micro-climate which in turn affect adversely the whole ecosystem.

Perhaps we can reduce the size of the profile under study into a model of a dam site. It maybe as small as a village catchment to a huge power and irrigation project. The model described in this example is found in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo, a water catchment for irrigation. The project consists of a watershed (forest and woodland) with an area of 200 hectares, a catchment which can hold water to irrigate effectively 50 hectares and generate electricity for one sitio. Freshwater fish is raised as part of the project's income. The main source of income is the irrigation fee. China, Japan and many European countries have advanced technology in water catchment that no drop of precious water is lost, so to speak.

Area development maybe initiated by nucleus projects. Later, if these projects become successful, similar or related projects can be put up, or the original projects expanded. Consolidation of developed areas leads to integrated area development, a process that is community-led or government assisted, or both.

Many development programs start with a grand design and heavy infrastructure. A foreign-funded project in Samar is infrastructure-oriented, and not directed to the alleviation of the plight of the masses. The 8-inch thick road built from a multi-million dollars grant could have been in the form of village bodegas, school houses, informal education of farmers and fishermen, initial capital for small business, cooperative development, and such programs addressed to meet the felt needs of the poor community.

7. The success of extension depends on linkage network and complementation with all sectors of society.

The extension agent is at the center of many activities. He provides information about the market. He translates researches into primers and takes a hand in their field application, identifies sources of input and credit, and helps make them available. He is a technician, teacher, consultant, community worker, and above all, a catalyst.

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Extension works on a cycle of activities, namely, (1) information, (2) determining needs and problems, (3) setting objectives, (4) program preparation, (5) making the work plan, (6) coordination, and (7) evaluation.

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8. It is important to first knock down the false notions as well as fallacies of development before developing an extension program.

Among these are the following:

(1.) The felt needs of the poor revolve mainly on their survival motives and therefore non-material and aesthetic values are non¬essential to them. This is not true. People deprived of material things equally seek approval, security, affection, self-esteem, recognition, and even   power. The hierarchy of needs by Wilgard, adopted from Maslow is based on the priority principle and not on the principle of exclusion if one has not attained the motives of the lower level.

(2.) One root cause of low productivity is the lazy nature of people. Indolence, according to Jose Rizal is traced to a natural cause wherein the metabolic rate is slowed down by extreme weather conditions (heat and high humidity), while leisure is commonplace because of the endowed environment. We pointed out that colonialism and feudalism dampen the spirit to work and aim high. Today neo-colonialism and neo-feudalism still exist in our society. One other reason for low productivity is the prevalence of malnutrition and diseases which reduce body resistance and drive.

(3.) Foreign investment in the country stimulates economic growth. In certain ways this is true. The question arises when we equate the gains between the foreign investor and the host country which provides labor that is paid cheap and prime land not compensated well enough. Other issues that do not favor equitable distribution of profits can be explained by the poor implementation of our policies and laws which sometimes result in the manipulation of profits favoring the foreign investors. This is not to mention the exploitative nature of joint ventures under the guise of natural agreements.

(4.) A progressive rural society naturally depends upon a strong agricultural economy which in turn is dependent on people who provide the much needed labor in the agricultural frontiers. But the frontiers have long been shrunk and vastly exploited, and the farms now reduced in size. Even intensive farming cannot absorb rural labor. That is why there is an exodus to urban areas. Today more than half of our population lives in cities and big towns. With 1.6 million new Filipinos added to our 90 million population, the hypothetical population structure looks like a squat or broad-based pyramid where the young people mainly infants and children are at the base. These are highly dependent upon a narrow stratum of working population. The average Filipino today is an early teener. Such population structure and the attendant demography of a young population do not lend a healthy picture to our economic recovery unless drastic measures are adopted to arrest our runaway population growth.

(5.) The majority of people are concerned with matters that affect themselves, their family and close friends over a short period of time. Long term objectives are not very common to the ordinary person. It is true that marginal communities do not plan much ahead. Affluence, on the other hand, propels people to plan for the future and the next generation. It enlarges the people's concern for other people and for larger community, and creates national and international consciousness.

(6) Stimuli to growth are distinct from the factors that limit it. In his book The Limits to Growth, Dr. Meadows explains that the very stimuli to growth could negate growth itself. Population can strip the economy of ecosystems. Industry spews wastes that destroy the environment. Exploitation of natural resources may lead to irreversible decline.

Conclusion

Our Philippine society is not an isolated case. All nations, including the developed ones, suffer in varying degrees the same age-old problems of poverty, degradation of the environment, unemployment, inflation, malnutrition, disease, alienation of the youth, the decline of people's trust in the institutions, and the rejection of traditional values. The endless search for their solutions is also man's unending dream. We draw much hope in extension, for extension is applied teaching, a means of transforming people beliefs, ideas, and above all, infusing the faith that they can help themselves.~

Author and wife, pose with Vietnamese alumni, HoChiMinh University of Technology, Vietnam.HCMUT focuses on technology dissemination on the grassroots. 2005

New buildings have been built after liberation and reunification on the university's sprawling campus half an hour drive from the heart of the city - Ho Chi Minh, formerly Saigon. HCMUT is the country's premier center of technology extension using multi-media.

HCMUT publishes manuals and extension bulletins in the varied fields of development in post-war Vietnam.

Presented by the author to the UST Graduate School during a faculty development seminar on the Social Commitment of Education; reference paper Ho Chi Minh University of Technology Vietnam 2005, and Sokhothai Thammathirat Open University, Bangkok, 2010 ~

NOTE:  Dr Abe V Rotor attended DevCom Course at the Afro-Asian Institute as representative of the committee on food and agriculture of the Senate of the Philippines in 1992. Dr Rotor studied Israel's Kibbutz system. A kibbutz is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. 

4CA5March 9, 2011 at 12:52 PM 

NOTE:  Dr Abe V Rotor studied at UPLB under the Farm and Home Development program, a post graduate course sponsored by the UP-Ford Foundation scholarship in 1962-63. With thanks and gratitude to his mentors, the late Dr Dioscorro Umali, Dr Thomas Flores, Mr. Diosdado Castro, Dr. Roger Cuyno, Dr Nora Quebral, Prof Perla Tagumpay,  Prof Leo de Guzman, other instructors, program coordinators, and to his colleagues, (Batch 1963).