Usapang Bayan Lesson in 10 Parts Let's Revive the Bahay Kubo Culture in these Difficult Times

Usapang Bayan Every Friday, 2 to 3 pm 

Let's Revive the Bahay Kubo Culture

in these Difficult Times

Lesson in 10 Parts:

Bahay Kubo is an enduring symbol of food self-sufficiency, indigenous biodiversity, simplicity and quaintness of living and natural beauty.

Part 1 - Features of Bahay Kubo (My Nipa Hut)
Part 2 - Your Backyard Garden: Food Bank and Living Laboratory
Part 3 - Food Security is Green Revolution at the Grassroots. Bring back agriculture to the people!

Part 4 - Wild Food Plants in 3 Articles
Part 5 - Farming is a Way of Life
Part 6 - Natural Food and Natural Farming

Part 7 - Urban Home Gardening Illustrated Models 
Part 8 - Plants every home garden must have
Part 9 - Your Backyard Garden in the City  
Part 10 - Village Biotechnology

ANNEX
A. Annual observance of World Food Day October 16, and

     International Day for the Eradication of Poverty,  October 17. 

B - Self-administered test: Green Revolution at the Grassroots

                                            Dr Abe V Rotor

Usapang Bayan with Ms Hermelina "Melly" Tenorio, Host

An old painting of Bahay Kubo,  circa 1970

Part 1 -  Features of Bahay Kubo (My Nipa Hut)

Bahay Kubo (My Nipa Hut) is one of the most loved traditional songs. All kids in my generation learned it by heart in the elementary. Not so many kids today are familiar with it. It is good to rediscover the beauty and lesson of the song.

Bahay kubo, hahit munti, ang halaman doon ay sari-sari. Singkamas at talong, sigidillas at mani, sitao, batao, patani. Kondol, patola, upo, kalabasa, at sa ka mayroon pa, labanos, mustasa. Sibuyas, kamatis, bawang at luya, at ang paligidligid ay linga.

 
 

Different versions of the Bahay Kubo

These are main features of the song.

• There are eighteen (18) plants, which are indigenous, mostly native varieties. (biodiversity)
• Many of the plants have medicinal values and are effective home remedies for common ailments (luya, sibuyas, bawang).
• The four kinds of vegetables are represented: leafy (mustasa), fruit (kamatis, talong, kalabasa), root (labanos, singkamas), seed (linga, patani, mani).
• Spices and condiments are included in the list (linga, luya, bawang)
• The plants have different planting and harvesting schedules, thus enhancing whole year round supply of vegetables, and the use of resources and family labor.
• The plants have different growing types or habits which means they occupy specific places and have space allocations. (viny, herb, bush).
• Nutrition-wise they provide the basic requirements for growing up and good health.
• The ambiance projected by the scene is green, tranquil, clean, shady and cool (environment-friendly).
• The garden exudes a feeling of self-sufficiency and offers a potential for livelihood.
• Simplicity is the key to a contented life (with least energy consumption, and amenities).
• Such a scene expands the imagination to include a backyard fishpond, chicken coop, orchard trees and ornamental plants, among others – all of these contribute to the enrichment of the Bahay Kubo, without modifying its basic concept and structure.

Folk wisdom tells us how good it is to live simply and naturally, eat properly, stay young, healthy and active, save and earn money, depend less on energy and imported goods, and enjoy being at home with the family. Bahay Kubo takes us closer to nature, to appreciate our culture, and leads us to the inner calling for peace, quiet and joy.

Part 2 -  Your Backyard Garden: 

Food Bank and Living Laboratory  

There are crops “we plant and forget.” Before the pot starts to shimmer, you realize you need some malunggay leaves, a dozen tops of kamote, a handful of fresh onion leaves, etc. All you need is to dash to the backyard and pick these green ingredients. Paminta, kamias, tanglad, pandan - they go with your recipe, too. Reserve those pullets and catfish for special occasions.

Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog

By size, my home farm is a Liliputian version of a corporate farm. Intensive cultivation-wise however, it dwarfs the monoculture of a plantation. It is only when your area is small that you can attend to the requirements of an integrated farm with basic features of a garden.

Our children grew up with a garden at home.

When I moved to the city, I set aside a corner lot equivalent to a space of a two-bedroom bungalow. Here, after two years of experimentation and redesigning a city home garden evolved - a miniature version of tri-commodity farming where I have vegetables and fruits, chicken and hito.

My wife, who is an accountant, estimates that presently, the garden could save up to 20 percent of our family’s expense for food, in exchange for twenty family man-hours every week. Labor makes up to 50 percent of production costs, she says. Since gardening is a hobby in lieu of outdoor games, we agreed not to include labor as cost. This gives a positive sign to the garden’s financial picture.

We do not also consider in the book the aesthetic value of weekends when the garden becomes a family workshop to prove green thumbs, and gainful influence my family has made on the community, such as giving free seeds and seedlings, and know-how tips. When my children celebrate their birthdays, the kids in the neighborhood enjoy harvesting tomatoes, string beans and leafy vegetables - a rare experience for boys and girls in the city.

What makes a garden? Frankly, I have no formula for it. I first learned farming from my father who was a gentleman farmer before I became an agriculturist. But you do not have to go for formal training to be able to farm well. All that one needs is sixth sense or down-to-earth sense, the main ingredient of a green thumb. Here are valuable tips.

1. Get the most sunlight

A maximum of five hours of sunlight should be available - geographically speaking that is. Morning and direct sunlight is ideal for photosynthesis. But you need longer exposure for fruit vegetables, corn and viny plants like, ampalaya. So with crucifers like mustard and pechay because these are long-day plants.

Well, to get more sunlight, I prune the surrounding talisay or umbrella trees at least once a year. I use the branches for trellis and poles. Then, I paint the surrounding walls with white to enhance reflected and diffused light to increase photosynthesis.

Plot the sun’s course and align the rows on an East-West direction. Plants do not directly over-shadow each other this way. This is very important during wet season when days are cloudy and plants grow luxuriantly. Other than maximizing solar radiation you also get rid of soil borne plant diseases. Sunlight that gets in between the plants helps eliminate pest and pathogens. And in summer, you can increase your seeding rate, and therefore potential yield. Try planting in triangular formation or quincunx. Outline that part of the garden that receives the longest sunlight exposure. Plant this area with sun-loving plants like okra and ampalaya.

Lastly, remember that plants which grow on trellises and poles “reach out for the sun,” thus require less ground space. Put up trellises at blind corners and train viny plants to climb early and form a canopy. For string beans, use poles on which they climb. You wouldn’t believe it but as long as your rows are aligned with the sun’s movement, and that trellises and poles are used, you can plant more hills in a given area, and you can have dwarf and tall plants growing side by side. Try alternate rows of sitao, tomato and cabbage.

2. Try Mixed Garden or Storey Cropping

What is the composition of an ideal garden? Again, there’s no standard design for it. The most practical type is a mixed garden. A mixed garden is like a multi-storey building. Plants are grouped according to height. That is why you have to analyze their growing habits.

Are they tall or dwarf? Are they seasonal, biennial or permanent? What part of the year do they thrive best? Refer to the planting calendar or consult your nearest agriculturist.

Look for proper cropping combinations through intercropping or crop rotation. Malunggay, papaya, kamias, banana and the like, make good border plants. Just be sure they do not shade smaller plants. Cassava and viny plants trained on trellis are next in height.


Community gardening, QC

The group of pepper, tomato and eggplant follows, while the shortest in height hierarchy are sweet potato, ginger and other root crops. Imagine how these crops are grouped and built like a tall building. We call this storey cropping.

A friend commented, “Why streamline your garden the American way?” I agree with him. Plant the Filipino way.
At any rate there are crops “we plant and forget.” Before the pot starts to shimmer, you realize you need some malunggay leaves, a dozen tops of kamote, a handful of fresh onion leaves, etc. All you need is to dash to the backyard and pick these green ingredients.

3. Practice Organic Farming

Traditional farming is back with modern relevance. Organic farming is waste recycling - not by getting rid of the waste itself but by utilizing it as production input. “This system is an alternative to conventional chemical farming”, says Domingo C. Abadilla in his book, Organic Farming.
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Practice organic farming for two reasons. Crops grown without chemical fertilizers and pesticides are safer and more nutritious.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What would you do with poultry droppings and Azolla from the fishpond? Kitchen refuse and weeds? Make valuable compost out of them. For potash, sieve ash from a garbage-dumping site. Just be sure it is not used for industrial waste. Can we grow crops without insecticides? Generally, no. But there are ways to protect plants in a safe way, such as the following:




.

• Use mild detergent, preferably coconut-based soap, to control aphids and other plant lice.

• Plant tomatoes around pest prone plants. They exude repellant odor on a wide variety of pests.

• Keep a vigil light above the garden pond to attract nocturnal insects that may lay eggs on your plants at daytime. Tilapia and hito relish on insects.
• A makeshift greenhouse made of plastic and mosquito net will eliminate most insects.

Alugbati, tops gathered for diningding and salad; tanglad for condiment. 

If you find stubborn insect pest like caterpillars and crickets, make a nicotine solution and spray. Crush one or two sticks of cigarette, irrespective of its brand, dissolve it in a bucket of water. The solution is ready for application with sprinkler or sprayer. But be sure not to use the solution on tomato, pepper and eggplant. It is possible that tobacco mosaic virus can be transmitted to these crops.

A friend who is a heavy smoker, came to visit our garden. When he touched the tomato plants, he was unknowingly inoculating mosaic virus. Tobacco virus can remain dormant in cigars and cigarette for as long as twenty years. Then it springs to life in the living system of the host plant that belongs to Solanaceae or tobacco family.

4. Raise Fish in the Garden Pond

 
Catfish (hito) fattened in our garden pond have become pets; the biggest measures 2 ft long.

Water from the pond is rich with algae, plant nutrients and detritus. While you water your plants, you are also fertilizing them. The pond should be designed for growing tilapia, hito or dalag, or a combination of these. For tilapia, keep its population low to avoid overcrowding and competition. Stock fingerlings of the same size and age.

Try growing hito, native or African. When you buy live hito from the market, separate the small ones (juveniles), which will serve as your growers. They are ready to harvest in 3 to 6 months with 3 pieces making a kilo. Hito is easier to raise than any other freshwater fish. One thing is that you do not change water often because the fish prefers to have a muddy bottom to stay.

Feed the fish with chicken and fish entrails, vegetable trimmings, dog food, etc. Just avoid accumulation of feed that may decompose and cause foul odor, an indication that Oxygen is being replaced with Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Sulfide.

Azolla, a floating fern, is good fish and animal feeds because it contains 20 to 25 percent protein,. It is also an excellent organic fertilizer because it is rich in nitrate, a product of nitrogen fixation by Anabaena, a microscopic blue-green algae living in the fronds of Azolla. Nitrate is important for plant growth. Grow Azolla in a separate pond, or in floating cage, so as to maintain a regular biomass supply.

 

5. Integrate Backyard Poultry

Raise some broilers and layers in separate cages. Have other cages to rear chicks and growers to replenish your stock. Formulate your feed. If not, mix commercial broiler feed and yellow corn in equal proportion. This is more economical and you may get better results than by using commercial broiler feeds alone.

Construct a fence around the cages and have some turkey on the loose. Similarly you may rear a few native chickens to get rid of feed waste. Clip their wings regularly to prevent them from escaping and destroying your garden. I don’t recommend piggery unless the neighborhood does not object to it.

6. Plant Fruit Trees

Do not forget to have some native fruit bearing trees such as guava, atis, guyabano, kamias, kalamansi and other citrus species. If your area is big you can include coconut, mango, kaimito, bananas. Rambutan? Why not? There are fruit bearing rambutan trees in some residences in Quezon City.

Atis, riped in the tree

Just like annual plants, adopt the East-West planting method for trees so that you can have seasonal crops in between their rows. Use compost for the fruit trees, just like in vegetables. You can plant orchard trees like mango, guyabano, coconut and cashew along the sidewalk fronting your residence.

7. Make Your Own Compost, and Grow Mushrooms, Too In one corner, build a compost pile with poles and mesh wire, 1m x 2m, and 2m in height. Dump leaves, kitchen refuse, chicken droppings and allow them to decompose to become valuable organic fertilizer. Turn the pile once a month until it is ready for use.
In another place you can have a mushroom pile made of rice straw, or water hyacinth. After harvesting the mushrooms, the spent material is a good compost material and composting will take a shorter time. To learn more about mushroom growing and composting, refer to the technology tips of DOST-PCARRD, or see your agriculturist in your area.

8. Plant Herbals - Nature’s First Aid
It is good to have the following plants as alternative medicine. Lagundi for flu and fever, guava for skin diseases and body odor, aromatic pandan and tanglad for deodorant and air freshener, oregano for cough and sore throat, mayana for boils and mumps, ikmo for toothache, pandakaki for cuts. There are other medicinal plants you can grow in your backyard. Remember, herbals are nature’s first-aid.

  

 Pansit-pansitan (Piperomia felucida) for arthritis; Oregano for colds and sore throat, also for food flavoring (dinuguan, pizza)

     

Pandan mabango for rice flavoring; soro soro for lechon. Coconut provides the family young (buko) and mature nuts every two months.

 
Saluyot and squash flowers grow with very little attention; malunggay tree.
 

 Malunggay is a must in every backyard. It grows along fences and in dead corners into a moderate size tree that remains productive up to 20 years or even more. Our malunggay tree at home is around 35 years now. Both leaves and young pods are rich in vitamins and minerals.

These things and many others are the reasons you should have a home garden. One thing is sure in the offing: it is a source of safe and fresh vegetables and fruits, fish and meat, and natural medicine. Most important of all, the garden is a re-creation of nature itself, a patch of the lost Eden. •

*Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid Dr Abe V Rotor and  Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM Band, 8-9 evening class, Monday to Friday

Part 3 -  Food Security is Green Revolution at the Grassroots. Bring back agriculture to the people!

Answers to the Self-Administered Test in Green Revolution 

True or False (Analyze answers, discuss in class or with a group ) 

Ordinary people like us can secure for ourselves and family enough food and proper nutrition. This is food security in action. It is food security that gives us real peace of mind. The biological basis does not need farther explanation. It is the key to unity and harmony with the living world.

A Green Revolution Beauty (Internet Photo)

 1. Green Revolution is a term that refers to the development of agriculture, tracing it from the time man settled down to raise animals and plants up to the present in which genetically modified organisms (GMO) of plants and animals are being produced. T

 2. Green revolution does not encompass agro-processing such as the making of brewed coffee beans, patis and bagoong, wine and vinegar, milk, cheese and ham, and the like – because these are beyond the farmer’s capability - financially and technologically. F 

 3. Green revolution must fit well into the demands of the market, which means that the raising of crops and animal and all attendant activities must conform to such “market directed” principle. F

 4. We are still nomadic like our primitive ancestors were, in the sense that we still derive much of our food and other needs from the sea, hills and forests. Furthermore, we travel far and wide from our homes and families in search of our basic economic needs – food, clothing, shelter and energy. This neo-nomadic syndrome has been spurred by our modern way of living influenced by overpopulation, industrialization, science and technology. T

Home gardening vs commercial gardening  (Commercial farming is market-directed, requiring huge capital outlay and intensive labor force outside the family.)

5. Growing affluence and increasing level of living standard takes us farther and farther away from the basic concept of green revolution, whereby ideally a family lives under one roof guaranteed by the bounty of the land the members cultivate, and historically built within framework of culture and tradition. T

 6. Based on the previous question, growing affluence and standard of living is the reason why modern China cannot prevent its thousands – nay millions – of young citizens to move out of the confines of a once socialistic system in search of the Good Life that they very much deserve. F

 7. The least sprayed vegetables – that is, vegetables that do not necessarily require the application of pesticides – are those that grow wild. Thus the ruling is, the more native a vegetable is, the more resistant it is to pest. T

 8. Green Revolution started as a movement in the Philippines way back in the fifties with the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement during the time of President Ramon Magsaysay, with the youth at the helm, led by 4-H Clubs, Rural Improvement Clubs (RIC), Boys Scouts and Girls Scouts, public and elementary schoolchildren, and barrio folks. T

 9. The crowning glory of Philippine Green Revolution was the attainment of self-sufficiency in food and other agricultural products following a food crisis in the early seventies under President Ferdinand Marcos. Through Masagana-99, Maisan 77, and many barangay food production programs, the country even surpassed sufficiency level and became a net exporter of rice and other food commodities. T

 10. When you introduce a new plant in your garden – a plant that has not been tried before – you are sure it is virtually free of pests, firstly because it did not bring with it the pests from its origin, and second, the local pests would take time to develop the taste for it. F 

 11. The longest stage or phase of Green Revolution was the expansion of horizons during the colonial period whereby land was forcibly taken and consolidated into estates and haciendas by the colonists. One such case is our own haciendas, a number of them are still existing and operating like the family hacienda – Luisita – which was singularly exempted from land reform. F

 Latest Green Revolution - Go Natural, Organic Farming

 12. The corporate world swallowed up small businesses including small farms in the US, Europe and in fact all over the world, such that the capitalist robbed the entrepreneur of his resources, technology, market, and worst, his potentials and therefore his future. (Economies of scale – is this the nemesis of small business?) T

13. Today’s fast emerging technologies continue to favor the capitalist thus making him grow even bigger (examples: McDonalds, San Miguel, Robina, Nestle’ and Jollibee conglomerate). This is what social scientists call Neo-colonialism, a kind of agriculture reminiscent of the colonial times. (Or is the trend today the opposite - the dinosaur syndrome is killing the beast.) T

 14. The most nutritious of all vegetables in terms of protein are those belonging to the legume family. In fact a number of legumes have higher protein content than meat. T 

15. If we rank from highest to lowest in protein content these vegetables should be listed as follows: soybean, segidillas or calamismis (pallang), mungo, tomato, malunggay. F

   16. It is better to specialize on certain crops in your garden for practical management. If leafy vegetables, plant pechay, lettuce, mustard, alugbati, talinum, and you need the same kind of soil, topography, amount of water, tools, planting schedule and season, and market. F

Practical hydroponics on the village level using local and recycled materials

 17. Mang Tonio is a simple farmer. He plants rice in his small paddy once a year because this is what other farms are doing, and it is traditional in the area. They say don’t break away sa naka-ugalihan. If you agree with Mang Tonio answer true.

 18. It is possible that a one-hectare farm can produce as much as a four-hectare farm does, even without additional amounts of inputs like fertilizer, pesticide and water. F 

 19. The idea of cottage agro-industry is to make use of inferior quality products that bring more profit or value-added advantage. Examples: immature and broken peanut into butter, overripe banana and tomato for catsup, fruit fly infested guava and mango for puree; typhoon damaged sugarcane into vinegar, bansot piglet into lechon, unsold fish and shrimps into bagoong and patis, and the like. F

 20. Samaka is a movement, acronym of Samahan ng Masaganang Kakanin – the united effort of a group to have more plentiful food for their families. It is the precursor of successful food production programs later led by PACD (Presidential Arm in Community Development), RCPCC (Rice and Corn Production Coordinating Program) later to become National Food and Agriculture Council (NFAC) which implemented Masagana 99, Maisan 77, Manukan Barangay, Bakahang Barangay, Wheat Production, Soybean Production, and other production programs then under President Marcos. Unfortunately, these were downplayed after the Edsa Revolution. T

 21. Botanically speaking, the parts of these plants we eat are classified as follows: cassava tuber is a root, so with kamote, peanut is a fruit, potato tuber is a stem, onion bulb is a leaf. T

 22. When buying papaya, the more yellow the fruit appears, the more mature it had been picked from the tree. Avoid buying papaya that appears dominantly green and yellow or orange only at the ridges. F

 23. There are five kinds of vegetables according to the parts of the plant (botanical classification). The following are classified under at least two kinds: squash or kalabasa, ampalaya, malunggay, sinkamas, short sitao or paayap. T 

24. The production capacity of genetically modified crops of corn, potato, and soybean – the most common GMO food we are taking every day - has increased even without increasing the supply of nutrients in the soil. GMOs are the world’s ultimate recourse to feed an ever-increasing population now approaching the 6.5 billion mark. F 

School gardening 

 25. Our soil and climate are favorable to many crops. Let us plant our rice fields and corn fields after harvest season with the following crops so that we will not import them and spend precious dollars, and that, it is the Filipino farmer and not the foreign farmer whom we patronize and subsidize. Potato (potato fries), Soybean (soybean oil, TVP, tokwa, toyo, taho), White beans (pork and beans), wheat (pandesal, cake, noodles). F

 26. The role of Green Revolution generates in supplying food for a fast-growing population is foremost even at the expense of clearing forest, leveling hillsides, reclaiming swamps – and even farming the sea. F

 27. Talinum is a small tree that is why it is so easy to grow, and will last for a long time, season after season and you have vegetables throughout the year. Alugbati is tree like malunggay. In fact, they usually grow together in some forgotten corner, along dikes and fences, around open well, and does not need care at all practically speaking. Alugbati is best as salad, cooked with mungo, beef stew, sinigang, bulanglang. F

 28. Agro-ecology will always clash – there is no compromise. Either you are an ecologist or you are an economist. Take eco-tourism, eco-village, etc.) F

 29. All these plants are propagated by cutting. All you need to do is cut-and-plant a branch or stem – malunggay, kakawate or madre de cacao, katuray, ipil-ipil, cassava, sugarcane, talinum, alugbati, kamias. F

 30. Homesite for the Golden Years (HGY) has the features of a integrated garden, enterprise, agro-industry, eco-sanctuary. The key is to supply this Patch of Eden (A Slice of Paradise) with all the amenities of modern living for senior citizens. T

31. The area required for a Homesite for the Golden Years is greatly variable and flexible; it can be as small as 100 square meters to 10 hectares in area. This allows evolution of, as many models as one could think of. F

32. The numerous hanging round fruits (tubers) on the stem of ube (Dioscorea alata) are the ones we plant, especially on large scale. F

33. Acclimatization means helping introduced plants and animals get adapted to their new environment. There are those that succeed but can’t reproduce; while others become better of that their counterparts they left behind. T

34. Based on the previous question, there are plants that have not been fully acclimatized even after many years so that extreme attention is given to them like Crucifers – cauliflower, cabbage, wonbok, celery, lettuce, broccoli. T

Urban home gardening. Open in this blog Urban Home ardening avrotor.blogspot.com 

35. Bagging with ordinary paper and/or plastic bags and sacks is necessary to protect from the dreaded fruit fly the fruits of guava, mango, jackfruit, ampalaya, durian, orange, avocado, mangosteen, guyabano and atis. F

36. Green thumb is a gift of naturalism. Only those who have this genetic gift are chosen caretakers of God’s Garden of Eden. Others have the equivalent gift in taking care of aquariums, house pets, children’s nursery. F

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ASEAN commitment to regional food security, food aid from the UN or US may simply ease the impact of food shortage or inequity in its distribution, but these are but palliative measures.
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37. We have our local pansit: sotanghon comes from rice while bihon comes mungo. We import noodles, miki and lomi made from wheat, while macaroni and spaghetti are made from semolina wheat or pasta. T

38. Value-added, a term in manufacturing gave rise to a new taxation E-VAT. To cope up with the added burden on the part of both entrepreneur and consumer, why not process your product and get instead the benefit of the new law? Example. Don’t just sell your palay harvest, have it milled sold as rice, make flour out of it, make puto and bihon, and others. T

 39. Based on the same question above, to get the benefits of VAT, market your own produce; be an entrepreneur, a middleman/trader and of course, a producer. T

 40. Start by planting the seeds of the following crops if you go wish into immediate commercial production – because the seeds of these plants are plentiful, you have no problem of supply: chico, guava, orange, mango, rambutan, lanzones, avocado, tiesa, atis, guayabano – as well as others that produce plenty of seeds. That’s how nature intended it to be. F

 41. Seeds always turn out genetically true to type. Big mango fruits come from seeds of big mango fruits, big guava means big guava, sweet pomelo – sweet pomelo, seedless atis – seedless atis, red pakwan – red pakwan. F

42. Just follow the direction of the sun when you plant by rows and plots – north to south, so that there is less overshadowing of plants. In this case you may increase your harvest by as much as 10 percent. F

 43. Extend the shelf life of fruits such as mango, avocado, atis, guayabano, nangka, by rubbing salt at the end of the stem, the base of the fruit. F

 44. Momordica charantia is the scientific name of ampalaya. Why spend for commercial food supplement in bottle, syrup, tablets, pills or dry herbal preparations as advertised - Momordica or Charantia, or Ampalaya Plus? (Write true for each recipe, if you agree)

 45 to 49. These are simple recipes. Write true for each recipe, if you agree.

• All you need is buy a bundle of fresh ampalaya tops made into salad and dipped with bagoong and vinegar.   It’s good for the whole family.
• Add ampalaya leaves to mungo and dried fish or sautéed pork.
• Pinakbet anyone? Native or wild ampalaya is cut in half or quarter without severing the cut.
• Ampalaya at delatang sardinas.

Bahay Kubo – concept and model of simple, happy and self-sufficient living on the countryside.

50. Ordinary people like us can secure for ourselves and family enough food and proper nutrition. This is food security in action. It is food security that gives us real peace of mind. The biological basis does not need farther explanation. It is the key to unity and harmony in the living world. Queuing for rice defeats the image of a strong economy. High prices of food do not give a good reflection either. How about ASEAN, UN, WHO? 

ASEAN commitment to regional food security, food aid from the UN or US may simply ease the impact of food shortage or inequity in its distribution, but they are but palliative measures. And having a dreamer Joseph in public food depot is not reliable either. It is green revolution at the grassroots that assures us of not only food but other necessities of life – and self-employment. It is that piece of Paradise that has long been lost that resurrect in some corner of your home. Paradise is not lost, if you create one. Do you agree?

Acknowledgement: Internet Photos

Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid  738 DZRB Green Revolution Test

(Abe V Rotor and Melly Tenorio) August 27, 2007)

Part 4 - Wild Food  Plants in 3 Articles

How familiar are you with these plants?

This article is dedicated to the late Professor Eduardo de Leon,

 botanist and professor, University of Santo Tomas

Part 1

                          "Famine or Survival” Food Plants

Palauan (Crytosperma merkusii) has large, starchy rootstock which is prepared for food in times of scarcity. It grows luxuriantly in thickets and on wetlands. This photo was taken on Mt Makiling with the late Professor Eduardo de Leon, a well known botanist and professor of the University of Santo Tomas.

Survivors of war, plane crash, shipwreck have a lot of lessons to share, among them are edible plants that kept them alive.

• Talisay (Terminalia catappa) bears nut like fruits that contain small seeds that taste like almond.

• Tibig (Ficus nota) The fruits are edible and have a good flavor. They are soft and fleshy when mature.

• Isis (Ficus odorata) or isis because its rough leaves are used as natural sandpaper for utensil and wood. Its fruits like tibig are edible.

• Balleba (Vallisneria) is an aquatic plant growing in clear streams, ponds and lakes, whose leaves appear like ribbon, hence it is also called ribbon grass. The leaves are gathered and served fresh with tomato, onion and salt. PHOTO

• Apulid or water chestnut (Eleocharis Dulcis). Our native apulid produces very small bulbs - only one-third the size of the Chinese or Vietnamese apulid. It grows wild in places where water is present year round. It is boiled, peeled and served. PHOTO

• Aratiles (Muntingia calabura) bears plenty of tiny berries which are red to violet when ripe. It is sweet and somewhat aromatic.

• Wild sinkamas (Pacchyrhizus erosus) has enlarged roots which may remain in the soil even after the plants has dried up in summer. It is gathered and eaten raw.

• Urai (Amaranthus spinosus). The plant become spiny as it matures. It is the very young plant that is gathered as vegetable. PHOTO

• Mulberry (Morus alba). Its leaves are the chief food of silkworm. The fruits when ripe are purple to black, and while very small are juicy and fairly sweet.

• Taro (Colocasia sp.). The Palawan gabi grows twice the height of man and produces a large corm. There is a technique in preparing and cooking the corm. Or making starch out of it. The key is thorough cleaning and cooking.

• Gulasiman (
• Alugbati (Basella rubra) is a twining plant with reddish stems and leaves. The tops are gathered as vegetable which is mucilaginous when cooked.

• Talinum (Talinum triangulare) PHOTO. The succulent stems and leaves are gathered as vegetable.

Part 2

Wild Food Plants: Saluyot and Spinach

 

Wild food plants, may be a relative term today.  Saluyot (Corchorus olitorius) and spinach (Amaranthus sp) which used to grow in the wild are now planted commercially. But the bulk of wild edible plants remains ethnic to remote communities and certain cultures.  For example, nami (Dioscorea hispida) is a poisonous root crop but natives in the hinder lands where this plant abundantly grows know how to remove the poison before eating the starch of the tuber.  During WW II people by necessity had to eat unlikely food such as the corm (enlarged base) of wild banana (butolan or balayang) and maguey (Agave cantala), earning the name famine food. 

 

                                   Bagbagkong  (Telosma cordata) flower buds

 

 Squash (Cucurbita maxima) male flowers, 

and saluyot (Corchorus olitorius)

Many of these wild edible plants are facing extinction, including the less popular varieties of common crops. It is because our attention has been on the propagation of economically important ones, and those our palate has been accustomed to. Until lately however, people are becoming more conscious of natural and nutritious food, evading many crops which are raised with chemicals, and lately, crops that have been genetically altered (Genetically Modified Organisms or GMO).     

 

Other wild food plants which are found in the market are portulaca (ngalog), dampalit, katuray, rosel, spinach, gulasiman, wild ampalaya, himbaba-o (alukong), to name a few.  Old folks have also a way of making ordinary things edible such as the male flower of rimas (Arthocarpus communis) is made into sweets, the same way the thick rind of pomelo (Citrus maxima) is sweetened in boiling sugarcane juice. Sweets are also made from kamias (Averrhoa balimbi.

Wild food plants include corm of banana, core of maguey (Agave cantala), bamboo shoot, bignay (Antidesma binuis), kumpitis (Clitorea purpurea), kamkamote, rattan fruits, sabawil, alukong, lotus seed, wild papaya, botolan (seeded banana), wild mushrooms, and many others. 

All these made a green revolution in some corner, so to speak.  It might as well usher a signal that not all times is food plentiful. ~

Part 3 - Wild Food Plants

Papait, Tanglad, Sorosoro

 

                                  Papait (Mollogo oppositifolia), wild and cultivated

Here is one for the book of Guinness. What is more bitter vegetable than ampalaya, Momordica charantia?

Answer: It is an unassuming slender, spreading, smooth, seasonal herb, Mollogo oppositifolia, a relative of a number of wild food plants belonging to Family Aizoaceae, locally known as papait (Iloko), malagoso or sarsalida( tagalog), amargoso-damulag (Pampango).

Anyone who has tasted this green salad that goes well with bagoong and calamansi or vinegar, plus a lot of rice to counteract its bitter taste, would agree that papait is probably the bitterest of all vegetables. Ampalaya comes at its heels when you gauge the facial expressions of those who are eating them.

Papait belongs to the same family - Aizoaceae – as dampalit, talinum, gulasiman, spinach, and alugbati- all wild food plants.

As a farm boy I first saw papait growing on dry river beds, the very catchments of floodwater during monsoon. There along the length of a river that runs under an old wooden bridge( now a flood gate made of culvert) which divided the towns of San Vicente and Sta.Catalina then, three kilometers from the capital town of Vigan, grew patches of Mollogo. It is difficult identify it among weeds- and being a weed itself none would bother to gather it. Wild food plants do not have a place in the kitchen - and much less in the market - when there is a lot of conventional food around. I soon forgot the plant after I lelt my hometown for my college education in Manila. In fact it was not in the list of plants which Dr. Fernando de Peralta, a prominent botanist, required us in class to study. That was in the sixties.

It was by chance that I saw the plant again, this time in the market at Lagro QC where I presently reside. Curiosity and reminiscence prompted me to buy a bundle. It cost ten pesos. What came to my mind is the idea of cultivating wild food plants on a commercial scale. The potential uses of dozens of plants that are not normally cultivated could be a good business. They augment vegetables that are not in season, as well as provide a ready and affordable source of vitamins and minerals.

Annual plants start sprouting soon after the first heavy rain ushering the arrival of the monsoon habagat. It seems that this year’s summer is short. In some places rains have started. A proof for this is the early appearance of papait in the market. From it I planted a few hills of papait in the backyard in anticipation for the May and June season which greatly favors the growth of annual plants.

For its food value, I found it in the book of my former professor, Dr. Eduardo Quisumbing, Medicinal Plants of the Philippines, and from that of William H. Brown, Useful Plants of the Philippines. As fresh food, it contains, among others

• Phosphorus, 0.11%
• Calcium, 0.11%
• Iron, 0.003%

Its bitter taste, old folks say, is good for skin. And it makes the skin "glow" for reasons we have yet to know other than its high vitamin and mineral contents. It is also good for those who have problems with high cholesterol and diabetes. Of course, the general rule in whatever we take is that, let’s take it with moderation.

Its bitterness is associated with bitter medicine, an impression most of us have. And yet many relish the taste of papait. It reminds us also of the sacrifice at Golgotha. Take a bite of Mollogo.~

In my research I found out that a number of popular wild edible species are related to Mollogo. They all belong to Family Aizoaceae. In one way or the other, the readers of this article may find the following plants familiar, either because they are indigenous in their locality, or they are found being sold in the market.

Lemon Grass or tanglad (Baraniw Ilk) and Sorosoro or karimbuaya (Ilk) are the most popular spices to stuff lechon - baboy, baka, manok, and big fish like bangus.

 

Tanglad - Andropogon citratus DC; Soro-soro or Karimbuaya (Ilk) - Euphorbia neriifolia 

These are wild plants that do not need cultivation; they simply grow where they are likely useful, indeed an evidence of co-evolution of a man-plant relationship. Tradition and culture evolve this way. Scientists elevated this knowledge to what is called ethnobotany, a subject in the graduate school. Retrieving and conserving traditional knowledge is as important as beating a new path.

For tanglad, all you have to do is gather the mature leaves, sometimes roots, make them into a fishful bundle and pound it to release the aromatic volatile oil. Stuff the whole thing into the dressed chicken or pig or calf to be roasted (lechon). Chop the leaves when broiling fish. Crushed leaves are used to give a final scrub. Tanglad removes the characteristic odor (malansa) and imparts a pleasant aroma and taste.

Tanglad is also used to spice up lemonade and other mixed drinks. It is an excellent deodorizer for bathrooms and kitchen. It is also used in the preparation of aromatic bath.

Not so many perople know that sorosoro makes an excellent stuff for lechon. The mature leaves are chopped tangential and stuffed into the dressed chicken or bangus for broiling.It has high oil content in its milky sap. It leaves a pleasant taste and it serves as a salad itself. It has a slight sour taste. Like tanglad, sorosoro removes the characteristic flesh and fishy odor. Add chopped ginger, onion and garlic as may be desired.

One word of caution: The fresh sap of sorosoro may cause irritation of the eye and skin. Wash hands immediately. Better still, use kitchen gloves.
                                                      

Perhaps the first wild food plant placed under commercial cultivation is saluyot (Corchorus olitorius ). The technology lies in breaking the dormancy of its seeds, which under natural condition, will not germinate until after the first strong rain. Today saluyot can be grown anytime of the year and is no longer confined among the Ilocanos. It is exported to Japan in substantial volume. Doctors have found saluyot an excellent - and safer - substitute to Senecal for slimming and cleansing.                                

 

Wild varieties of ampalaya (Momordica charantia), eggplant (Solanum melongena), patani (Phaseolus lunatus), and the male flower of himbaba-o or alukong (Ilk)

  

          

Gulasiman or ngalog (Ilk) Portulaca oleracea;

Edible fern (pako) Diplazium esculentum.

• Dampalit, Sesuvium portulacastrum- it is found growing along the beach, around fishpond and in estuarine areas. It is prepared as salad or made into pickles.

• New Zealand Spinach, Tetragonia expansa, is known as Baguio spinach. It is sold as salad vegetable. The leaves are fleshly and soft, typical to other members of the family.

• Gulasiman, Portolaca oleracea- also known as purslane, a common weed cosmopolitan in distribution, rich in iron, calcium and high in roughage. Cooked as vegetable or served as salad.

• Talinum, Talinum triangulare- a fleshy herb that grows not more than a foot tall. It is excellent for beef stew and sinigang. It was introduced into the Philippines before W W II.

• Libato, Basella rubra- it is also called alugbati, a climbing leafy vegetable that is much used in stews. It makes a good substitute to spinach. The young leaves and shoots are gathered, and when cooked the consistency is somewhat mucilaginous.

Dampalit (Sesuvium portulacastrum) is found growing along beaches, around fishponds and in estuarine areas. It is prepared as salad or made into pickles.

*Living with Nature Center San Vicente  Botanical Garden features a series of articles in this blog avrotor.blogspot.com which serve as guide and reference to visitors and researchers. The garden is located in San Vicente Poblacion in IIocos Sur. It is owned and managed by the Rotor Family. ~

Part 5 - “Farming is a way of living,”  

Key to basic self-sufficiency and happy life 

The better farmer is the entrepreneur who grew up with farming and pursued training in technology and farm management, and has gain the confidence and skills in transforming the traditional concept of a farm into an agribusiness. In Memory of Dean Felix D Maramba, author of Farm Management in the Philippines 

“Farming is a way of living,” says the dean of farm management in the Philippines, Dean Felix D. Maramba, quoting Eugene Devenport who said that farming is not only a business, but a mode of life. “Sometimes the business is the prominent feature, so successful that life seems to run on one long sweet song. Sometimes the business runs so low that life is a bitter struggle.”

The farm and the family home is intertwined; in fact they are one. Anything that affects the farm as a business also directly affects as a home. The farm operator is the head of the household and the bulk of the farm work is done by the members of the family. The farmer is the farmer 24 hours a days, on weekdays as well as on Sundays and Holidays.

The children are brought up in close contact with nature. They develop an appreciation of the manifestations of the Creator through living things and their order. The farm boy does not have to wait until he is grown up before he can work and share family responsibilities. He is brought up early in the family business. In this way he will learn the value of industry and a sense of proprietorship early in life. The work habits and resourcefulness developed by farm children are kept throughout their lives.

This old school of Dean Maramba may not be the model progressive farmers are looking for today, but definitely the better farmer is the entrepreneur who grew up with farming and pursued training in technology and farm management, and has gain the confidence and skills in transforming the traditional concept of a farm into an agribusiness and therefore, he has a better chance in dealing with the complexities of world of the agriculture and business.

Make the correct decisions in farming.

Farming is no easy task. It is full of decisions - decisions based on socio-economic principles, and guided by rules of conduct and natural laws and of society. These are 10 guidelines in decision making.

1. Surplus labor resources of typically large rural families should be directed to labor-intensive projects, such as integrated farming.

2. Hillside or upland agriculture requires the cultivation of permanent crops, preferably through mixed cropping, such as intercropping of coconuts with orchard trees and annual crops.

3. Coastal and river swamplands should be preserved as wildlife sanctuaries, and should be managed as an ecosystem, rather than an agricultural venture.

4. Wastes can be recycled and converted into raw materials of another enterprise. Farm wastes and byproducts of processing can be processed biologically into methane, organic fertilizer, and biomass for vermiculture.

5. Productivity of small farms can be increased through pyramidal or storey farming. Batangas and Cavite farmers are well known for storied multiple cropping.

6. Poor soils can be rehabilitated through natural farming, such as green manuring, crop rotation and use of organic fertilizers, all integrated in the farming system. Corn-peanut, rice-mungo are popular models of crop rotations.

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Let’s aim at unifying agriculture and ecology into agro-ecology. This is what practical farming is all about. 

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7. Cottage industries are built on agriculture, guided by profitability and practical technology. It is time to look at the many agro-industries, from food processing to handicrafts.

8. Tri-commodity farming maximizes utilization of resources, such as having an orchard, planting field crops, and raising fish and livestock on one farm.

9. Cooperative farming is the solution to economics of scale, these to include multipurpose and marketing cooperatives of farmers and entrepreneurs.
10. Since the number of days devoted to farming is only one-­third of the whole year, livelihood outside of farming should be developed. Like a sari-sari store, a small farm cannot afford to have too many hands. Other opportunities should be tapped outside of farming by other members of the family.

Always go for natural food

The rule of thumb is that, it is always preferred to eat foods grown under natural conditions than those grown with the use of chemicals. These are criteria to know if a food is natural?

·It must be fresh, or freshly packed
·It must be free from pests and diseases
·There are no harmful chemicals and artificial additives, including antibiotics residues.
·Food must not be tainted with radiation
·Natural food excludes the so-called junk food.
·It has been processed by natural means such as blast freezing, sun drying and the like.
·Packaging materials are safe to human health, animals and the environment.
·It meets standard organoloeptic test (taste test) and nutritional value requirements.

There are many kinds of vegetables you can choose for backyard and homelot gardening.

Pahiyas 

A festival of fruits and vegetables, Lucban, Quezon (Pahiyas May 15)

There are many vegetables to choose from: leafy – malungay, talbos (kalabasa, kamote, sayote), kangkong,; Stem – asparagus, bamboo shoot; flower– katuray, squash flower, cauliflower, broccoli, himbaba-o (alokong); fruit – ampalaya, squash, cucumber, green corn, sayote, tomato, eggplant, green papaya, pepper; root – Gabi, kamote, ube, tugui, ginger, onion, garlic, carrot, radish; seed – patani, sitao, white bean, black bean, cowpea, green pea, chick pea, pigeon pea, peanut, linga (sesame), paminta (black pepper) 

Malunggay is the most popular tree vegetable in the tropic. In the province no home is without this small tree at the backyard or in a vacant lot. The leaves, flowers, juvenile pods and young fruits of Moringa oleifera (Family Moringaceae) go well with fish, meat, shrimp, mushroom, and the like. It is one plant that does not need agronomic attention, not even weeding and fertilization, much less chemical spraying. You simply plant an arms length cutting or two, in some corner or along the fence and there it grows into a tree that can give you a ready supply of vegetables yearound. What nutrients do we get from malunggay?

Pineapple farm, Silang Cavite 

Here is a comparison of the food value of the fresh leaves and young fruits, respectively, in percent. (Marañon and Hermano, Useful Plants of the Philippines)

· Proteins 7.30 7.29
· Carbohydrates 11.04 2.61
· Fats 1.10 0.16
· Crude Fiber 1.75 0.76
· Phosphorus (P2 O 5) 0.24 0.19
· Calcium (CaO) 0.72 0.01
· Iron (Fe2O3) 0.108 0.0005

Owing to these properties and other uses, rural folks regard malunggay a “miracle tree.” Take for other uses. The root has a taste somewhat like that of horse-radish, and in India it is eaten as a substitute to it. Ben oil extracted from the seed is used for salad and culinary purposes, and also as illuminant. Mature seeds have antibacterial and floucculants properties that render drinking water safe and clear.

From these data, it is no wonder malunggay is highly recommended by doctors and nutritionists for both children and adults, particularly to nursing mothers and the convalescents.

Get the best from your favorite fruits

1. Be keen with the appearance, smell, feel – and even sound – of the fruit before harvesting or buying it. There’s no substitute to taste test.though. Develop your skills on these fruits: mango, musk melon, soursop or guyabano and its relative, sugar apple or atis. Also try on caimito, chico, siniguelas, and such rare fruit as sapote.
2. To ripen fruits, rub table salt on the cut stem (peduncle). Salt does not only facilitate ripening, it also protects the fruit from fungi and bacteria that cause it to rot. You can use the rice box-dispenser to ripen chico, caimito, avocado, tomato, and the like. Wrap the fruits loosely with two or three layers of newspaper before placing them inside the box. As the fruits ripen they exude ethylene gas that hastens ripening.

3. Bigger fruits are always generally preferred. Not always. Native chico is sweeter and more aromatic than the ponderosa chico. Big lanzones have large seeds. Bicol or Formosa pineapple, although not juicier, is sweeter than the Hawaiian variety. Of course we always pick up the biggest mango, nangka, caimito, watermelon, cantaloupe, atis, guyabano, and the like.

4. There are vegetables that are eaten as fruit or prepared into juice. Examples are carrot, tomato, green corn, and sweet green pea. Asparagus juice, anyone? Try a variety of ways in serving your favorite fruits. nangka ice cream, fruit cocktail in pineapple boat, avocado cake, guava wine. Enjoy the abundance of your favorite fruits, consult the fruit season calendar.

Engage in cottage industries, such as home made coconut virgin oil.

The price of this “miracle cure” has soared and there is now a proliferation of commercial brands of virgin coconut oil in the market. The old folks show have been doing this for a long time. One such person is Mrs. Gloria Reyes of Candelaria (Quezon) who makes virgin coconut oil. This is the step-by-step process.

1. Get twenty (20) husked, healthy, and mature nuts. They should not show any sign of spoilage or germination. Shake each nut and listen to the distinct sound of its water splashing. If you can hear it, discard the particular nut.

2. Split each nut with a bolo, gathering the water in the process. Discard any nut at the slightest sign of defect, such as those with cracked shell and oily water, discolored meat, presence of a developing endosperm (para). Rely on a keen sense of smell.

3. With the use of an electric-driven grating machine, grate the only the white part of the meat. Do not include the dark outer layer of the meat.

4. Squeeze the grated meat using muslin cloth or linen to separate the milk (gata) from the meal (sapal). Gather the milk in wide-mouth bottles (liter or gallon size).

5. Cover the jars with dry linen and keep them undisturbed for 3 to 5 hours in a dry, dark and cool corner.

6. Carefully remove the floating froth, then harvest the layer of oil and place it in a new glass jar. Discard the water at the bottom. It may be used as feed ingredient for chicken and animals.

7. Repeat the operation three to four times, until the oil obtained is crystal clear. Now this is the final product – home made virgin coconut oil.

Virgin coconut oil is a product of cold process of oil extraction, as compared with the traditional method of using heat. In the latter coconut milk is brought to boiling, evaporating the water content in the process, and obtaining a crusty by-product called latik. The products of both processes have many uses, from ointment and lubrication to cooking and food additive. There is one difference though, virgin coconut oil is richer with vitamins and enzymes - which are otherwise minimized or lost in the traditional method.

Get rid of waste by utilizing them. 

Agricultural byproducts make good animal feeds, as follows:

· Rice straw, corn stovers and sugarcane tops, the most common crop residues in the tropics, contain high digestible nutrients, and provide 50% of the total ration of cattle and carabaos.

· Rice bran and corn bran are the most abundant general purpose feed that provides 80 percent of nutritional needs of poultry, hogs and livestock, especially when mixed with copra meal which is richer in protein than imported wheat bran (pollard).

· Cane molasses is high in calorie value. Alternative supplemental feeds are kamote vines for hogs and pineapple pulp and leaves for cattle.

Here is a simple feed formula for cattle: Copra meal 56.5 kg; rice bran (kiskisan or second class cono bran) 25kg; molasses 15kg; Urea (commercial fertilizer grade, 45%N) 2.0kg; salt 1.0kg; and bone meal 0.5kg. Weight gain of a two-year old Batangas cattle breed fed with this formulation is 0.56 kg on the average,

These are byproducts which have potential feed value: These are byproducts or wastes in the processing of oil, starch, fish, meat, fruit and vegetables. The abundance of agricultural by-products offers ready and cheap feed substitutes with these advantages.

It cut down on feed costs,
reduces the volume on imported feed materials,
provides cheaper source of animal protein,
provides employment and livelihood, and
keeps the environment clean and in proper balance.

Protect nature through environment-friendly technology.

Organic farming using Farm residues like rice hull. 

One example is the use of rice hull ash to protects mungbeans from bean weevil. Burnt rice hull (ipa) contains silica crystals that are microscopic glass shards capable of penetrating into the conjunctiva of the bean weevil, Callosobruchus maculatus. Once lodged, the crystal causes more damage as the insect moves and struggles, resulting in infection and desiccation, and ultimately death.

This is the finding of Ethel Niña Catahan in her masteral thesis in biology at the University of Santo Tomas. Catahan tested two types of rice hull ash, One is partly carbonized (black ash) and the other oven-burned (white ash). Both were applied independently in very small amount as either mixed with the beans or as protectant placed at the mouth of the container. In both preparations and methods, mungbeans – and other beans and cereals, for that matter – can be stored for as long as six months without being destroyed by this Coleopterous insect.

The bean weevil is a cosmopolitan insect whose grub lives inside the bean, eating the whole content and leaving only the seed cover at the end of its life cycle. When it is about to emerge the female lays eggs for the next generation. Whole stocks of beans may be rendered unfit not only for human consumption, but for animal feeds as well. It is because the insect leaves a characteristic odor that comes from the insect’s droppings and due to fungal growth that accompanies infestation.

Rice is substitute, and a better one, to wheat flour. 

Of all alternative flour products to substitute wheat flour, it is rice flour that is acclaimed to be the best for the following reasons:

· Rice has many indigenous uses from suman to bihon (local noodle), aside from its being a staple food of Filipinos and most Asians.

· In making leavened products, rice can be compared with wheat, with today’s leavening agents and techniques.

· Rice is more digestible than wheat. Gluten in wheat is hard to digest and can cause a degenerative disease which is common to Americans and Europeans.

· Rice is affordable and available everywhere, principally on the farm and in households.

Other alternative flour substitutes are those from native crops which are made into various preparations - corn starch (maja), ube (halaya), gabi (binagol), and tugui’ (ginatan), cassava (cassava cake and sago).

Lastly, the local rice industry is the mainstay of our agriculture. Patronizing it is the greatest incentive to production and it saves the country of precious dollar that would otherwise be spent on imported wheat. ~

Part 6 -  Natural Food and Natural Farming  

"Natural farming is the key in the pursuit of this global trend. It is important in sustaining economic production, above all, the integrity of our ecosystems." - avr

 Home Gardening, author's residence QC

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature - School on Blog [avrotor.blogspot.com]

Good health and good food go together, doctors all over the world tell us. Even our children quite often explain to us the importance of proper nutrition, balanced diet, fortification with vitamins and minerals. They tell us to take high protein food, or ask us if we are taking adequate calories. Lately such terms, beta-carotene and good cholesterol have come into the picture.

Now I hear a new term, probiotics. The way I under-stand these substances is that they keep our body always on the alert to fend off stress as a result of overwork and diseases. They are front liners and act as defense shield, Now if probiotics and antibiotics (substances that directly kill germs) work together, can we then say we can have better health and longer life?

Apparently yes, confirmed a balikbayan United Nations official who is working on a new food source from cyanobacterla or blue green algae. Again, this is a revolution in food and agriculture by the fact itself that we are now taking unconventional food such as Spirulina, an ancient organism probably the first kind of living thing that appeared on earth.

Going back to the main topic, I would like to see the other side of the fence. There are many reported ailments and abnormalities, which are traced to the food we take, and it is not only for the lack of intake. Cancer for instance, is often related to food. So with high uric acid which leads to kidney trouble. High blood pressure, high choles­terol, high sugar level.  Aftatoxin causes cirrhosis of the liver. Ulcers are food related. So with many allergies.

Given these premises, I would like to discuss a new frontier of agriculture which I believe4 is also the concern of other sectors of the food industry. It is not only that we must produce enough food. We must be able to produce quality food, which ensures good health, reduces risks to diseases and ailments, and prolongs life. This is the topic that I would like to take up with you in this special occasion, the 25th year or silver anniversary of NFA that I was once a part. I am going to talk about food, which should contribute to good health, long life, enjoyment, and peace of mind.

Here then are seven postulates to address this challenge to present day agriculture. We reckon the Green Revolution in the sixties which ushered production gains from improved varieties and techniques, followed by another wave in the seventies and eighties which was responsible in opening the fields of mariculture (farming the sea), and conversion of wastelands into farmlands.  We soon realized that there is need  “to go back to basics". Thus ecological farming was born. It is also farming with a moral cause: the enhancement of quality life, good health and long life on one hand, and the maintenance of an ecologically balance environment.

1.   IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO EAT FOOD GROWN UNDER NATURAL CONDITION THAN FOOD GROWN WITH CHEMICALS. This statement can be captured with one term "natural food". All over the world this is a label is found on food grown without chemicals. People are afraid of becoming sick because of the chemicals introduced into food. They know that chemical fertilizers and pesticides go with the crops and are passed on to the body destroying our organs and systems.

 No artificial additives, please. Additives such as food colorings and fillers are looked upon with suspicion.

2.   PEOPLE ARE AVOIDING HARMFUL RESIDUES AND ARTIFICIAL ADDITIVES IN FOOD. A trace of certain farm chemicals is enough to condemn a whole shipment under the rules of the US Food and Drug Administration. One kind of residue that people are avoiding is antibiotics. Poultry and hog farms maintain high antibiotic levels to safeguard the animals from diseases. In so doing the antibiotics is passed on to the consumers. In the first place our body does not need antibiotics. But every time we eat eggs, chicken, pork chop, steak, and the like, we are taking in cumulatively antibiotics. This makes our immune system idle. This punishes certain organs like the kidney and liver. To others, antibiotics cause allergy.

Another culprit is radiation. Traces of radiation can be hazardous. Many countries immediately took drastic action to avoid contamination following the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident ten years ago. Then we have toxic metals emitted from manufacturing and from vehicles. These are mercury, cadmium, and lead, to name the most common pollutants in our waters today.

3.   PEOPLE ARE BECOMING MORE CONSCIOUS OF THE NUTRITION VALUE OF FOOD RATHER THAN ITS PACKAGING AND PRESENTATION. Many people now reject junk foods, even if their packaging is attractive. Softdrinks have taken the backseat, courtesy of fruit juices and mineral water. People have even learned that plant varieties have different levels of food value even if they belong to the same species. To a lesser extent this is also true among the different breeds of an animal species.

4.   FRESHNESS IS THE FIRST CHOICE CRITERION FOR PERISHABLE FOOD. Indeed there is no substitute to fresh-ness, a function of handling and marketing. The farmer has the first and direct hand in enhancing this quality. If he keeps his plant; healthy, their products will 'have longer shelf life. Products free from pest and diseases stay fresh longer.

5. FOOD PROCESSING MUST BE APPROPRIATE AND SAFE.

Processing such as drying, milling and manufacturing, is key to higher profit. The profit that is generated from it is referred to as value-added to production. Economists tell us that there is money in postproduction and marketing.

6.   FOOD MUST BE FREE FROM PEST AND DISEASES.

It is shocking to find certain pest in food. So with the possibility that food is a carrier of disease organisms. Reports about infested NFA rice needs serious attention. Poor rice is an insult to the Filipino whatever is his economic status.

There has been news of food poisoning too, as a result of food deterioration, or contamination. Remember the Seven Eleven Store mass food poisoning? For a reputable establishment, such an accident deserves something to look deeper. What is the truth behind image building and advertisement?

7. FOOD PRESERVATION MUST ENSURE QUALITY, AND ABOVE ALL, SAFETY. Be aware of the fish that is stiff yet looks fresh. Be keen with formalin odor. Salitre is harmful, so with vetsin. Too much salt is not good to the body. I saw a puto maker use lye or sodium hydroxide to help in the coagulation of the starch. Sampaloc or tamarind candies are made bright red with shoe dye. So with ube to look life real ube.

Now I am going to discuss in details each postulate as it applies to the farmer, and the condition of his farm. I will try to relate the issue with actual practices so that we can draw up innovations to improve them, as we explore technologies that would settle certain issues.

8. AVOID AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE FOOD FROM GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS OR GMO.  There is an increasing awareness worldwide on the potential harmful effects of taking GMO products as food.  Bt corn for example carries a gene of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis,  golden rice carries the yellow gene of the daffodil, milk contains recombinant bovine growth hormone.  Other GMO food include soybeans, papaya, squash and zucchini, which carry "foreign" genetic material.  Here is a list of countries that have banned both GMO imports and GMO cultivation: Algeria, Kyrgyzstan, Bhutan, Madagascar, Peru, Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.  EU members are selective in banning GMO. Most countries require labeling of GMO products, and are strict in their quarantine laws, and land use policy against GMO. 

NATURAL FARMING

CThe other name of natural farming as we all know is organic farming, that is the use of organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizer such as urea and NPK or complete fertilizer. In the US and Europe, people go for organically grown food. Lately in malls and big groceries, we find rice in package or bag labeled "organically grown rice". Let me point out that the use of organic fertilizer must be complemented by other factors.

                                                   Community gardening, QC 

First, the organic fertilizer must be free from pathogen that causes diseases. 

Second, it must not carry toxic waste or metal as this kind of fertilizer is manufactured from waste materials.

And third, It must go hand in hand with no spraying, or if it can not be helped, at least the spray used is biodegradable, such as substances that are of botanical derivatives like derris, neem and chrysanthemum.

Let me give you scenarios of natural farming.

1.    Payatak method (Samar) - This is a local version of zero tillage. No plowing, no harrowing. A herd of carabaos trample of the soil until it turns puddle, then the one-month old seedlings are transplanted. No spray, no fertilizer. This is natural farming in the marginal sense, a carryover of traditional farming.

2.   Mixed orchard (Zambales) - A mixture of several kinds of trees, orchard, firewood trees, forest trees grow together without any apparent planning. Yet these trees follow a natural pattern of arrangement. They have no common pest, they need soil fertility differentially, they have their own space niche, they make up several storeys. Management is very little. Nature takes care of everything.

 3. Multiple cropping model (Sta. Maria. Bulacan) -  Here the farmer engages in the production of three commodities. For Narciso Santiago, national outstanding farmer,  his 2.5-ha farm produces frults, vegetables and rice. He has several heads of carabao and cattle grown on homelot, pastured between the orchard trees. A pond supplies irrigation, as it produces tilapia and mudfish. Why three commodities? It is because they are closely integrated. This is the key to natural farming where there are a number of products to be desired. First the animals produce, other than meat and milk, manure for the plants, the plants produce food for the family and market, and they together with their residues give feeds to the animals. The pond is source of irrigation for the plants, principally rice and vegetables. It is a waterhole for wildlife for biological control. Because of its integrated structure and management. the farm itself becomes a balanced system. This is the key to sustainable production. This is ecological. farming.

4.  Sloping agricultural land technology or SALT (Bohol) Call this natural farming even if the farm is a logged area. Precisely the idea is for the farmer to return the land to its natural state as much as possible. How does he do it? If one sees the model, the land has a grade of 20 to 40 degrees. The steeper the grade the more difficult it is to apply the system. Over and above 45 degrees the model may not work at all.) Here the contour of the slope is marked and outlined so that the sole of the plow, so to speak, will be level at all times. The contours are spaced uniformly, and the rows which follow the contour are planted at interval of annual and permanent crops.

                          Mushroom growing: Auricularia, Pleurotus,

5.   The idea is for the permanent crops like fruit trees and firewood trees to sandwich the annual crops like peanut, rice, corn vegetable. The herbage of, say ipil-ipil, is used as organic fertilizer. Neem tree is used for pesticide. Lantana is a natural pest repellant, so with Eucalyptus. Legume intercropping and crop rotation replenish the soil of Nitrogen.

6.   Modified models (rice and corn areas).  Rice farming can be modified to suit the conditions of natural farming. There are farms today that rely entirely on homemade or commercial organic fertilizers. These are contracted farms to supply organically grown rice. 

An equally important aspect of successful farming is cleanliness.  This means no weeds, trimmed waterways, properly disposed farm wastes, efficient drainage, well arranged rows, properly scheduled farming activities, and the like.  All this requires but low technology that is also affordable, and contributes to good health to both producer and consumer, and the whole community.  

Genetically resistant varieties are chosen. Proper time of planting and harvesting is needed. We should know that clean farms, healthy plants and good management, are basic. What we are saying is that the use of chemicals is dispensable. To a single farmer, this is easier said than done. There is a need for collective and community effort, in which case farming , especially if it intends to shift to organic, likewise becomes more efficient as cost of production can be brought down.

Coconut farms (Southern Tagalog and Bicol). Seldom do we hear of coconut cultivation that follows the agronomic practices of other major crops like sugar cane or corn. 

Perhaps there is no plant more resistant than coconut. It is because it perfectly fits our soil, climate and latitude. It is indigenous to us. In fact it evolved with our islands and our culture. Evolutionarily and historically what I am saying is that natural farming is not new. And more importantly, it is a product of long years of development. It is not just acclimatization. It is co-evolution.

The message is that let us explore the richness of our biodiversity and our culture as a people to be able to understand the working of nature. Nature shows us the way. Nature, the way our ancestors knew then, is the nature we know today, except that we have embraced many changes in farming as well as in life style. Many of these changes had not passed the test of time.

In Laguna and Quezon, coconut is the dominant species of an ecosystem. The presence of man in the ecosystem has modified it to suit to his needs. For example, he has chosen only the trees and plants that grow between the coconut trees. Unknowingly he raises animals, which reduce the richness of plant species diversity.

We still see around well-established, stable coconut areas where man's intervention is kept low, but my fear is the current practice of logging old coconut trees for lumber.

Natural farming then is important as a way of farming.  It is also important in sustaining economic production, and above all, the continuity of our ecosystems that we have placed in our hands. Given these premises the farmer today faces a new challenge worthy of the title, "the backbone of the nation." ~

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LESSON on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM, [www.pbs.gov.ph] 8-9 evening class Monday to Friday

Part 7 - Urban Home Gardening Illustrated Models (People's Green Revolution) 

Grow your own vegetables at home to save on high cost of vegetables in the market.

This article includes a plan of a Homesite - an ideal integrated garden around a home in a suburb and rural setting. Compare this with the Bahay Kubo model. You may integrate and modify them according to your situation and needs.

Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature - School on Blog [avrotor.blogspot.com]
Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School on Air) 738 AM Radyo ng Bayan with Ms Melly C Tenorio

Lesson: Home garden. It is fun, exercise, and source of food and medicine - and income. Study these models and find out which are applicable in your area. Share your experience with the members of the family, school and your community.

Patola (Luffa acutangula) on trellis. Home garden project at Barangay Valencia, San Juan, MM

These gardening models have been developed from studies and observations of successful projects locally and abroad. They serve as guide to participants and listeners of Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (School-on-Air)* to help them in their projects, particularly in times of food scarcity, such as the present situation caused by the El Niño phenomenon.

But even during normal times, these models are useful to gardening enthusiasts, especially children and senior citizens who find this hobby highly rewarding to health and leisure, and as a source of livelihood, notwithstanding. Those who are participating in projects in food production and environmental beautification, such as the Clean and Green Movement, and Green Revolution projects, will find these models similarly valuable.

One however, can modify them according to the peculiarity of his place, and in fact, he can combine those models that are compatible so as to develop and integrate them into a larger and more diversified plan.

One who is familiar with the popular Filipino composition Bahay Kubo, can readily identify the plants mentioned therein with those that are cited in these models. And in his mind would appear an imagery of the scenario in which he can fit these models accordingly.

We invite all followers and readers of this Blog to adopt these models in their own capacities wherever they reside - in the rural or urban area - and whenever they find them feasible, and thus join the movement reminiscent of the Green Revolution in the seventies under the leadership of President Ferdinand Marcos. . 

Part 8 -  Plants every home garden must have

"When local tomato costs more than that of imported apple, when you can't find papaya in the market, pechay wilted exuding chemicals - there must be  something seriously wrong!  Go into home gardening."   

A home garden is beneficial for your cooking and dining, home beautification and sanitation, and most important of all, your health. And, why not initiate gardening in your school and community? (Visit avrotor'blogspot.com: Urban Gardening Models) 

It's gardening time! And gardening is beneficial for your kitchen, home beautification and sanitation, and most important of all, your health. And, why not initiate gardening in your school and community?

Saba banana (Musa sapientum): multipurpose - leaves for food wrapper (suman, tupig, bibingka, kanin), packaging material (baon, live or fresh fish and aquatic products), leaves as floorwax. Fruit, ripe or green, excellent source of energy and nutrients, so with the flowers (puso ng saging). Trunk as source of fiber and packing materials. Mushroom spawn under banana plants.

Coconut (Cocos nucifera): It's the most important plant in the world when it comes to productivity and variety of products. The nut is a complete food - young or mature. There is no part of the plant that has no value. Walis tingting, leaves for mat, wall, and sinambong basket. Trunk lumber outlasts most wood. Fiber from husk for cordage and net, coir dust for soil conditioner. Flower spadix for ties and rope. Nectar  for beverage and wine. All you need is, two to three trees at some years age interval. A coconut tree can live productively up to fifty years giving you at least a dozen nuts every month.

Malunggay, the miracle vegetable. In the province no home is without this small tree at the backyard or on a vacant lot. The leaves, flowers, juvenile pods and young fruits of Moringa oleifera (Family Moringaceae) go well with fish, meat, shrimp, mushroom, and the like. It is one plant that does not need agronomic attention, not even weeding and fertilization, much less chemical spraying. You simply plant an arms length cutting or two, in some corner or along the fence and there it grows into a tree that can give you a ready supply of vegetables year round. What nutrients do we get from malunggay?

Here is a comparison of the food value of the fresh leaves and young fruits, respectively, in percent. (Marañon and Hermano, Useful Plants of the Philippines)

• Proteins 7.30 7.29 

• Carbohydrates 11.04 2.61

• Fats 1.10 0.16

• Crude Fiber 1.75 0.76

• Phosphorus (P2 O 5) 0.24 0.19

• Calcium (CaO) 0.72 0.01

• Iron (Fe2O3) 0.108 0.0005

Kamias: Once in a while try sinigang with kamias, specially fish. It takes out the fish smell. Its sourness is distinct from that of vinegar, tamarind, and kalamansi. Just don't indulge too much because the sour taste is oxalic acid which is deficient in calcium. But oxalic acid is best for cleaning tiles and utensils. Its effective in cleaning the drain. Bees often visit its flowers.

Tanglad or lemon grass as food condiment for kuhol and lechon. As deodorizer, it imparts pleasant smell, absorbs or masks unpleasant odor in bathroom and kitchen. 

Alugbati is a climber, and lives for some years providing a continuous supply of shoots or tops cooked as vegetable, best with mungo. It is the cheapest and readily available source of iron for the family.

Pandan mabango: Aromatic, its leaves improve the taste of food. Put a leaf in a pot of  old rice (laon) before cooking to take out the moldy taste and smell. Pandan leaves make a refreshing drink with any fruit juice. Try sago, gulaman and pandan. Pandan cake? It breaks the monotony in bread products. First prepare a layer of pandan leaves like mat before cooking fish paksiw will taste. Clean kitchen utensils and tiles with crushed leaves. A unique volatile oil present only in pandan mabango make this plant a favorite of housewives .

These are also a must to have in the garden: 

1. Onion (shallot or bulb)
2. Papaya
3. Guava
4. Sorosoro (karimbuaya Ilk)
5. Oregano
6. Lagundi
7. Sambong
8. Lemon or kalamansi
9. Luya (ginger)
10. Sampaguita
    

Don't forget to build a garden pond and plant around it water-loving plants. Pond water becomes green with algae. It is the best natural fertilizer, specially if you are raising tilapia or hito or Pangasius catfish.

1. Kangkong
2. Gabi
3. Sugarcane for chewing

Here are some suggested plants to include.

1. Kutchai (photo, right)
2. Siling labuyo
3. Kamote
4. Yerba buena (mint)
5. Ampalaya
6. Tsaang Gubat or wild tea (photo, top)

Depending on the type of soil and climate of your place, you can add on to this list, substitute those that don't fit. Arrange plants into a multistory structure for in increase density and diversity. Arrange them according to a homestead pattern for functional and aesthetic reasons. Aim for functionality and practicality.
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NOTE: Don't replace any plant that is useful or have potential value. Allow those that spontaneously grow like saluyot, spinach, alugbati, talinum, gulasiman. They are wild and seasonal. Help them grow for your vegetable supply, herbal medicine, and animal feeds.
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Just don't overload your garden. And give yourself a break. Don't be a slave to your garden, so to speak. By the way even without our knowing it, annual plants simply sprout in the garden. Many of these are seasonal. While most are so-called weeds, there are food plants that grow spontaneously like saluyot, amaranth of kolitis, wild yam, wild ampalaya, talinum, and at least a dozen more if you are living in a fertile and well drained area.

What to plant often poses a problem.  Here's what you can do.  Go around your community and adjacent places where the environment is typical in your area, (topography, soil type, and the like) and survey the kinds of plants that successfully grow.  Interview farmers and gardeners. With this list you can design your garden, or add on to those you already have.  If you like to experiment with "foreign" plants, do it on research basis and learn more in the process.   

A home garden actually is a miniature representation of a large farm. It is typical in size for a family, as small as 10 square meters to one hectare, or larger. The garden is an integral part of the home. It aims at self-sufficiency, environmental friendliness, and health-promoting, and ultimately, at living in a Home, Sweet Home with Nature.~

Part 9 - Your Backyard Garden in the City   

There are crops “we plant and forget.” Before the pot starts to shimmer, you realize you need some malunggay leaves, a dozen tops of kamote, a handful of fresh onion leaves, etc. All you need is to dash to the backyard and pick these green ingredients. Paminta, kamias, tanglad, pandan - they go with your recipe, too. Reserve those pullets and catfish for special occasions.

By size, my home farm is a Liliputian version of a corporate farm. Intensive cultivation-wise however, it dwarfs the monoculture of a plantation. It is only when your area is small that you can attend to the requirements of an integrated farm with basic features of a garden.

Our children grew up with a garden at home.

When I moved to the city, I set aside a corner lot equivalent to a space of a two-bedroom bungalow. Here, after two years of experimentation and redesigning a city home garden evolved - a miniature version of tri-commodity farming where I have vegetables and fruits, chicken and hito.

My wife, who is an accountant, estimates that presently, the garden could save up to 20 percent of our family’s expense for food, in exchange for twenty family man-hours every week. Labor makes up to 50 percent of production costs, she says. Since gardening is a hobby in lieu of outdoor games, we agreed not to include labor as cost. This gives a positive sign to the garden’s financial picture.

We do not also consider in the book the aesthetic value of weekends when the garden becomes a family workshop to prove green thumbs, and gainful influence my family has made on the community, such as giving free seeds and seedlings, and know-how tips. When my children celebrate their birthdays, the kids in the neighborhood enjoy harvesting tomatoes, string beans and leafy vegetables - a rare experience for boys and girls in the city.

What makes a garden? Frankly, I have no formula for it. I first learned farming from my father who was a gentleman farmer before I became an agriculturist. But you do not have to go for formal training to be able to farm well. All that one needs is sixth sense or down-to-earth sense, the main ingredient of a green thumb. Here are valuable tips.

1. Get the most sunlight

A maximum of five hours of sunlight should be available - geographically speaking that is. Morning and direct sunlight is ideal for photosynthesis. But you need longer exposure for fruit vegetables, corn and viny plants like, ampalaya. So with crucifers like mustard and pechay because these are long-day plants.

Well, to get more sunlight, I prune the surrounding talisay or umbrella trees at least once a year. I use the branches for trellis and poles. Then, I paint the surrounding walls with white to enhance reflected and diffused light to increase photosynthesis.

Plot the sun’s course and align the rows on an East-West direction. Plants do not directly over-shadow each other this way. This is very important during wet season when days are cloudy and plants grow luxuriantly. Other than maximizing solar radiation you also get rid of soil borne plant diseases. Sunlight that gets in between the plants helps eliminate pest and pathogens. And in summer, you can increase your seeding rate, and therefore potential yield. Try planting in triangular formation or quincunx. Outline that part of the garden that receives the longest sunlight exposure. Plant this area with sun-loving plants like okra and ampalaya.

Lastly, remember that plants which grow on trellises and poles “reach out for the sun,” thus require less ground space. Put up trellises at blind corners and train viny plants to climb early and form a canopy. For string beans, use poles on which they climb. You wouldn’t believe it but as long as your rows are aligned with the sun’s movement, and that trellises and poles are used, you can plant more hills in a given area, and you can have dwarf and tall plants growing side by side. Try alternate rows of sitao, tomato and cabbage.

2. Try Mixed Garden or Storey Cropping

What is the composition of an ideal garden? Again, there’s no standard design for it. The most practical type is a mixed garden. A mixed garden is like a multi-storey building. Plants are grouped according to height. That is why you have to analyze their growing habits.

Are they tall or dwarf? Are they seasonal, biennial or permanent? What part of the year do they thrive best? Refer to the planting calendar or consult your nearest agriculturist.

Look for proper cropping combinations through intercropping or crop rotation. Malunggay, papaya, kamias, banana and the like, make good border plants. Just be sure they do not shade smaller plants. Cassava and viny plants trained on trellis are next in height.

Community gardening, QC

The group of pepper, tomato and eggplant follows, while the shortest in height hierarchy are sweet potato, ginger and other root crops. Imagine how these crops are grouped and built like a tall building. We call this storey cropping.

A friend commented, “Why streamline your garden the American way?” I agree with him. Plant the Filipino way.
At any rate there are crops “we plant and forget.” Before the pot starts to shimmer, you realize you need some malunggay leaves, a dozen tops of kamote, a handful of fresh onion leaves, etc. All you need is to dash to the backyard and pick these green ingredients.

3. Practice Organic Farming

Traditional farming is back with modern relevance. Organic farming is waste recycling - not by getting rid of the waste itself but by utilizing it as production input. “This system is an alternative to conventional chemical farming”, says Domingo C. Abadilla in his book, Organic Farming.
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Practice organic farming for two reasons. Crops grown without chemical fertilizers and pesticides are safer and more nutritious.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What would you do with poultry droppings and Azolla from the fishpond? Kitchen refuse and weeds? Make valuable compost out of them. For potash, sieve ash from a garbage-dumping site. Just be sure it is not used for industrial waste. Can we grow crops without insecticides? Generally, no. But there are ways to protect plants in a safe way, such as the following:




.

• Use mild detergent, preferably coconut-based soap, to control aphids and other plant lice.

• Plant tomatoes around pest prone plants. They exude repellant odor on a wide variety of pests.

• Keep a vigil light above the garden pond to attract nocturnal insects that may lay eggs on your plants at daytime. Tilapia and hito relish on insects.
• A makeshift greenhouse made of plastic and mosquito net will eliminate most insects.

Alugbati, tops gathered for diningding and salad; tanglad for spice and condiment. 

If you find stubborn insect pest like caterpillars and crickets, make a nicotine solution and spray. Crush one or two sticks of cigarette, irrespective of its brand, dissolve it in a bucket of water. The solution is ready for application with sprinkler or sprayer. But be sure not to use the solution on tomato, pepper and eggplant. It is possible that tobacco mosaic virus can be transmitted to these crops.

A friend who is a heavy smoker, came to visit our garden. When he touched the tomato plants, he was unknowingly inoculating mosaic virus. Tobacco virus can remain dormant in cigars and cigarette for as long as twenty years. Then it springs to life in the living system of the host plant that belongs to Solanaceae or tobacco family.

4. Raise Fish in the Garden Pond

 
Catfish (hito) fattened in our garden pond have become pets; the biggest measures 2 ft long.

Water from the pond is rich with algae, plant nutrients and detritus. While you water your plants, you are also fertilizing them. The pond should be designed for growing tilapia, hito or dalag, or a combination of these. For tilapia, keep its population low to avoid overcrowding and competition. Stock fingerlings of the same size and age.

Try growing hito, native or African. When you buy live hito from the market, separate the small ones (juveniles), which will serve as your growers. They are ready to harvest in 3 to 6 months with 3 pieces making a kilo. Hito is easier to raise than any other freshwater fish. One thing is that you do not change water often because the fish prefers to have a muddy bottom to stay.

Feed the fish with chicken and fish entrails, vegetable trimmings, dog food, etc. Just avoid accumulation of feed that may decompose and cause foul odor, an indication that Oxygen is being replaced with Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Sulfide.

Azolla, a floating fern, is good fish and animal feeds because it contains 20 to 25 percent protein,. It is also an excellent organic fertilizer because it is rich in nitrate, a product of nitrogen fixation by Anabaena, a microscopic blue-green algae living in the fronds of Azolla. Nitrate is important for plant growth. Grow Azolla in a separate pond, or in floating cage, so as to maintain a regular biomass supply.

 

5. Integrate Backyard Poultry

Raise some broilers and layers in separate cages. Have other cages to rear chicks and growers to replenish your stock. Formulate your feed. If not, mix commercial broiler feed and yellow corn in equal proportion. This is more economical and you may get better results than by using commercial broiler feeds alone.

Construct a fence around the cages and have some turkey on the loose. Similarly you may rear a few native chickens to get rid of feed waste. Clip their wings regularly to prevent them from escaping and destroying your garden. I don’t recommend piggery unless the neighborhood does not object to it.

6. Plant Fruit Trees

Do not forget to have some native fruit bearing trees such as guava, atis, guyabano, kamias, kalamansi and other citrus species. If your area is big you can include coconut, mango, kaimito, bananas. Rambutan? Why not? There are fruit bearing rambutan trees in some residences in Quezon City.

Atis, ripe on the tree

Just like annual plants, adopt the East-West planting method for trees so that you can have seasonal crops in between their rows. Use compost for the fruit trees, just like in vegetables. You can plant orchard trees like mango, guyabano, coconut and cashew along the sidewalk fronting your residence.

7. Make Your Own Compost, and Grow Mushrooms, Too In one corner, build a compost pile with poles and mesh wire, 1m x 2m, and 2m in height. Dump leaves, kitchen refuse, chicken droppings and allow them to decompose to become valuable organic fertilizer. Turn the pile once a month until it is ready for use.
In another place you can have a mushroom pile made of rice straw, or water hyacinth. After harvesting the mushrooms, the spent material is a good compost material and composting will take a shorter time. To learn more about mushroom growing and composting, refer to the technology tips of DOST-PCARRD, or see your agriculturist in your area.

8. Plant Herbals - Nature’s First Aid
It is good to have the following plants as alternative medicine. Lagundi for flu and fever, guava for skin diseases and body odor, aromatic pandan and tanglad for deodorant and air freshener, oregano for cough and sore throat, mayana for boils and mumps, ikmo for toothache, pandakaki for cuts. There are other medicinal plants you can grow in your backyard. Remember, herbals are nature’s first-aid.

  

 Pansit-pansitan (Piperomia felucida) for arthritis; Oregano for colds and sore throat, also for food flavoring (dinuguan, pizza)

     

Pandan mabango for rice flavoring; soro-soro for lechon. Coconut provides the family young (buko) and mature nuts every two months.

 
Saluyot and squash flowers grow with very little attention; malunggay tree.
 

 Malunggay is a must in every backyard. It grows along fences and in dead corners into a moderate size tree that remains productive up to 20 years or even more. Our malunggay tree at home is around 35 years now. Both leaves and young pods are rich in vitamins and minerals.

These things and many others are the reasons you should have a home garden. One thing is sure in the offing: it is a source of safe and fresh vegetables and fruits, fish and meat, and natural medicine. Most important of all, the garden is a re-creation of nature itself, a patch of the lost Eden. 

*Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid Dr Abe V Rotor and  Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM Band, 8-9 evening class, Monday to Friday

Part 10 - Village Biotechnology  

                 - Green Revolution OF, FOR and BY the People

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature - School on Blog [avrotor.blogspot.com]

"Many village industries bowed out to companies that now control the production of commercial and imported brands, such as patis, suka, puto, nata, bihon, to name a few. The proliferation of many products and the inability of local products to keep up with the growing sophisticated market have further brought the doom of these originally village products. Definitely under such circumstances the small players under the business parameter of economies of scale*** find themselves at the losing end. Bigness is name of the game. Can we regain the lost village-based biotechnology industries?"

 My father, a gentleman farmer, was a brewer. He inherited the trade from my grandfather and from previous generations. I still use today the good earthen jars in producing the same products – basi, the traditional Ilocos wine, and its by-product, natural vinegar - using the same indigenous formula. (PHOTOS)

  

The making of basi and vinegar, as well as a dozen other products of sugarcane, like panocha, pulitiput, kalamay, sinambong, and kinalti, is a traditional cottage industry in the Ilocos region which is traced back to the Pre-Hispanic era when hundreds of small independent brewers like my father lived comfortably on this once flourishing industry.

Things appeared simple then. But time has changed. We know that sugarcane has long been planted with rice, legumes and vegetables, but it sounds like new in modern parlance with terms like crop rotation or crop diversification. Making of wine, vinegar and confectionary products are under agro-industry. Because the process generates profit, we call this value-added advantage. So with the tax that is now slap manufactured products. To determine the business viability of a business we determine its internal rate of return (IIR) and its return on investment (ROI). Brewing today is agro-processing and an agribusiness. And my father would be called not just a proprietor, but a business partner since family members and relatives share in the operation of the business. Possibly his title today would be general manager or CEO.

Things in my father’s time had become outdated, shifting away from traditional to modern. But it is not only a matter of terminology; it is change in business structure and system.

Big business is name of the game

Like many other village industries, the local breweries bowed out to companies that now control the production of commercial and imported brands. The proliferation of many products and the inability of local products to keep up with the growing sophisticated market have further brought their doom. Definitely under such circumstances the small players under the business parameter of economics of scale find themselves at the losing end. Bigness is name of the game.

Monopolies and cartels now control much of the economy here and in other countries. Transnational companies have grown into giants, that one big company far outweighs the economy of a small country. Total business assets of North Carolina is more than that of Argentina, which is one of the biggest countries of the world in terms of land area and population.

Today agribusiness and biotechnology are corporate terms that are difficult to translate on the village level and by small entrepreneurs.

All these fit well into the present capitalistic system that is greatly under the influence of IMF-WB on borrower-countries, and terms of trade agreements imposed by GATT-WTO on its members, many of which reluctantly signed the its ratification. Under the capitalistic system there has been a shift of countryside industries into the hands of corporations, national and transnational. Take these examples.

Coffee PHOTO is raised by millions of small farmers all over the world, but it is monopolized by such giant companies like Nestle and Consolidated Foods. Cacao is likewise a small farmer’s crop, but controlled by similar multinationals. So with tea, the world’s second most popular beverage.

Unfortunately this inequity in the sharing of the benefits of these industries is exacerbated by the absence of a strong and effective mass-based program that emphasizes countryside development through livelihood and employment opportunities. Multi-national monopolies thrive on such business climate and biased laws and program in their favor.

We import rice, corn, sugar, fruits, meat and poultry, fish, fruits and vegetables in both fresh and processed products, when in the sixties and seventies we were exporters of the same products. We were then second or third in ranking after Japan in terms of economic development.

“Small business is beautiful” (photo: EC Schumacher, author) 

There must be something wrong somewhere. But while we diagnose our country’s ills, we should make references to our own successes, and even come to a point of looking on models within our reach and capability to imitate. There are “unsung heroes” in practically all fields from business, agriculture, manufacturing to folk medicine and leadership. Perhaps for us who belong to the older generation, it is good to feel whenever we recall old times when life was better – and better lived.

Biopiracy and technopiracy

Ampalaya (Momordica charantia) is a source of medicinal substances registered iunder exclusive brand names by drug companies here and abroad.

“The biggest piracy that is taking place today is not at sea and on the rich. It is stealing people’s resources – from herbal medicine to indigenous technology – stolen by rich countries and big corporations. Biopiracy and technopiracy constitute the greatest violation to human rights and social justice in that the people are not only deprived of their means of livelihood; they are forced to become dependent on those who robbed them.”

(Biopiracy is a situation where indigenous knowledge of nature, originating with indigenous peoples, is used by others for profit, without permission from and with little or no compensation or recognition to the indigenous people themselves.Informal or “underground” economy.  Internet)

Informal or “underground” economy is the lifeblood of rural communities. They are the seat of tradition, rituals, barter and other informal transactions. They link the farm and the kitchen and the local market. They are versions of agro-processing and agribusiness on the scale of proprietorship and family business. They strengthen family and community ties.

It is for this reason that the NACIDA – National Cottage Industry Development Authority – was organized. And truly, it brought economic prosperity to thousands of entrepreneurs and families in the fifties to sixties.

South Korea for one in the late sixties, saw our PRRM and NACIDA models and improved on them with their SAEMAUL UNDONG development program which ultimately brought tremendous progress in its war-torn countryside. In Tanzania, one can glimpse some similarities of our program with LAEDZA BATANI (Wake up, it’s time to get moving) rural development program. The Philippines stood as an international model, recognized by the WB and ADB, for our countryside development program – cottage industries, farmers’ associations, electric cooperatives, rice and corn production program, which made us agricultural exporters. So with our biotechnology in farm waste utilization through composting with the use of Trichoderma inoculation, and in natural rice farming by growing Azolla in lieu of urea and ammonium nitrate. Another area of biotechnology is in the retting of maguey fiber, which is a work of decomposing bacteria.

The Saemaul Undong, also known as the New Village Movement, Saemaul Movement or Saema'eul Movement, was a political initiative launched on April 22, 1970 by South Korean president Park Chung-hee to modernize the rural South Korean economy. The movement is being revived today as a model for developing countries such as Cambodia, 2015 (photo)

Today there are many opportunities of biotechnology that can be tapped and packaged for small and medium size businesses and organized groups of entrepreneurs and farmers. These opportunities also pose a big challenge to the academe and to enterprising researchers in government and private institutions.

Important organisms for biotechnology

• Spirulina (blue-green alga or Eubacterium) - high protein, elixir.
• Chlorella (green alga) – vegetable, oxygen generator
• Pleurotus and Volvariella (fungi, mushroom) – anti-cancer food.
• Azolla-Anabaena (eubacterium with fern)– natural fertilizer
• Porphyra, red seaweed, high-value food (“food of the gods”)
• Hormophysa (brown alga) – antibiotics
• Eucheuma (red alga) – source of carageenan, food conditioner
• Gracillaria (brown alga) – source of agar, alginate
• Sargassum (brown alga) – fertilizer and fodder
• Saccharomyces (fungus, yeast) – fermentation
• Aspergillus (fungus) – medicine, fermentation
• Penicillium (fungus) – antibiotics

. Caulerpa (green alga) – salad 
• Leuconostoc (bacterium) – nata de coco, fermentation of vegetables
• Acetobacter (bacterium) – acetic acid manufacture
• Rhizobium (bacterium) – Nitrogen fixer for soil fertility
• Nostoc (BGA or Eubacterium) – bio-fertilizer
• Ganoderma (tree fungus) – food supplement, reducer
• Halobacterium and Halococcus (bacteria)- bagoong and patis making
• Lactobacillus (bacterium) lactic fermentation, yogurt making
• Candida (yeast) – source of lysine, vitamins, lipids and inveratse
• Torulopsis (yeast) – leavening of puto and banana cake
• Trichoderma (fungus) – innoculant to accelerate composting time.

Before I go proceed allow me to present a background of biotechnology in relation with the history of agriculture.

Three Green Revolutions

The First Green Revolution took place when man turned hunter to farmer, which also marked the birth of human settlement, in the Fertile Crescent, (PHOTO) between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where the present war in Iraq is taking place.

The Second Green Revolution is characterized by the improvement of farming techniques and the expansion of agricultural frontiers, resulting in the conversion of millions of hectares of land into agriculture all over the world. This era lasted for some three hundred years, and marched with the advent of modern science and technology, which gave rise to Industrial Revolution. Its momentum however, was interrupted by two world wars.

Then in the second part of the last century, a Third Green Revolution was born. With the strides of science and technology, agricultural production tremendously increased. Economic prosperity followed specially among post-colonial nations - the Third World - which took the cudgels of self rule, earning respect in the international community, and gaining the status of Newly Industrialized Nations (NICs) one after another.

Towards the end of the last century, the age of biotechnology and genetic engineering arrived. Here the conventions of agriculture have been radically changed. For example, desirable traits are transferred through gene splicing so that trans-generic – even trans-kingdom – trait combinations are now possible. Bt Corn, a genetically modified corn that carries the caterpillar-repelling gene of a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, exemplifies such case. Penicillin-producing microorganisms are not only screened from among naturally existing species and strains; they are genetically engineered with super genes from other organisms known for their superior production efficiency.

Biotechnology for people and environment

The need for food and other commodities is ever increasing. Together with conventional agriculture, biotechnology will be contributing significantly to the production of food, medicine, raw materials for the industry, and in keeping a balanced ecology. This indeed will offer relief to the following scenarios:

1. World’s population increases from today’s 8 billion to 10 billion in 10 years.

2. Agricultural frontiers have virtually reached dead end.

3. Farmlands continue to shrink, giving way to settlements and industry,
while facing the onslaught of erosion and desertification

4. Pollution is getting worse in air, land and water. (Photos: right, garbage clandestinely exported by Canada to the Philippines)

 

5. Global warming is not only a threat; it is a real issue to deal with.

These scenarios seem to revive the Apocalyptic Malthusian theory, which haunts many poor countries - and even industrialized countries where population density is high. We are faced with the problem on how to cope up with a crisis brought about by the population-technology-environment tandem that has started showing its fangs at the close of the 20th century.

Now we talk in terms of quality life, health and longevity, adequate food supply and proper nutrition - other human development indices (HDI), notwithstanding.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As scientists open the new avenue of genetic engineering to produce genetically modified organisms for food, medicine and industry, entrepreneurs are shaping up a different kind of Green Revolution on the old country road – the employment of veritable, beneficial microorganisms to answer the basic needs of the vast majority of the world’s population.

Green Revolution for the masses

This Green Revolution has to be addressed to the masses. The thrust in biotechnology development must have a strong social objective. This must include the integration of the mass-based enterprises with research and development (R&D). Like the defunct NACIDA, a program for today should be cottage-based, not only corporate-based. Genetic engineering should be explored not for scientific reasons or for profit motives alone, but purposely for social objectives that could spur socio-economic growth on the countryside, and the improvement the lives of millions of people.

Alternative Food

These lowly organisms will be farmed like conventional crops. In fact, today mushroom growing is among the high-tech agricultural industries, from spawn culture to canning.

Spirulina, a cyanobacterium, has been grown for food since ancient times by the Aztecs in Mexico and in early civilizations in the Middle East. Its culture is being revived on estuaries and lakes, and even in small scale, in tanks and ponds. Today the product is sold as “vegetablet.”

Seaweeds, on the other hand, are being grown extensively and involving many species, from Caulerpa to Nori. (PHOTO below)  Seaweed farming has caught worldwide attention in this last two decades, not only because it offers a good source of food, but also industrial products like carageenan and agar.

Environmental Rehabilitation

In the remote case that a nuclear explosion occurs, how possible is it to produce food and other needs in the bomb shelters deep underground? Fiction as it may seem, the lowly microorganisms have an important role. For one, mushrooms do not need sunlight to grow. Take it from the mushroom-growing termites. Another potential crop is Chlorella. While it produces fresh biomass as food it is also an excellent oxygen generator, oxygen being the by-product of photosynthesis. But where will Chlorella get light? Unlike higher plants, this green alga can make use of light and heat energy from an artificial source like fluorescent lamp.

Sewage treatment with the use of algae is now common in the outskirts of big cities like New York and Tokyo. From the air the open sewer is a series of reservoirs through which the sewage is treated until the spent material is released. The sludge is converted into organic fertilizer and soil conditioner, while the water is safely released into the natural environment such as a lake or river.

Marine seaweeds are known to grow in clean water. Their culture necessitates maintenance of the marine environment. Surprisingly seaweeds help in maintaining a clean environment, since they trap particles and detritus, and increase dissolved Oxygen and reduce dissolved CO2 level in water.

Bacteria being decomposers return organic substances to nature. So with algae and fungi. Fermentation is in fact, a process of converting organic materials into inorganic forms for the use of the next generation of organisms. In the process, man makes use of the intermediate products like ethyl alcohol, acetic acid, nata de coco, lactic acid, and the like.

Speaking of sustainable agriculture, take it from Nature’s biofertilizers like Nostoc and other Eubacteria. These BGAs form green matting on rice fields. Farmers in India and China gather this biomass, and use it as natural fertilizer. Another is Rhizobium, a bacterium that fixes atmospheric Nitrogen into NO3, the form of N plants directly absorb and utilize. Its fungal counterpart, Mycorrhiza, converts Nitrogen in the same way, except that this microorganism thrives in the roots of orchard and forest trees.

Let me cite the success of growing Azolla-Anabaena (PHOTO) on ricefields in Asian countries. This is another biofertilizer, and discriminating consumers are willing to pay premium price for rice grown without chemical fertilizer - only with organic and bio-fertilizers. At one time a good friend, medical doctor and gentleman farmer, Dr. P. Parra, invited me to see his Azolla farm in Iloilo. What I saw was a model of natural farming, employing biotechnology in his integrated farm –

• Azolla for rice,
• Biogas from piggery,

• Rhizobia (photo) inoculation for peanuts and mungbeans,
• Trichoderma for composting.
• Food processing (fruit wine and vinegar)

His market for his natural farm products are people as far as Manila who are conscious of their health, and willing to pay the premium price for naturally grown food.

Genetic Engineering

It is true that man has succeeded in splicing the DNA, in like manner that he harnessed the atom through fission. Genetic engineering is a kind of accelerated and guided evolution, and while it helps man screen and develop new breeds and varieties, it has yet to offer the answer to the declining productivity of farms and agriculture, in general, particularly in developing countries. Besides, genetically engineered products have yet to earn a respectable place in the market and household.

Genetic engineering of beneficial organisms is the subject of research institutions all over the world. I had a chance to visit the Biotechnology Center in Taipei and saw various experiments conducted by Chinese scientists particularly on antibiotics production. But biotechnology has also its danger. One example is the case of the “suicide seeds”. These are hybrid seeds which carry a trigger enzyme which destroys the embryo soon after harvest so that the farmers will be forced to buy again seeds for the next cropping. It is similar to self-destruct diskettes, or implanted viruses in computers. This is how Monsanto, the inventor of suicide seeds, is creating an empire built at the expense of millions of poor farmers over the world.

Medicine and Natural Food

As resistance of pests and pathogens continue to increase and become immune to drugs, man is corollarily searching for more potent and safe kinds and formulations. He has resorted to looking into the vast medicinal potentials of these lowly organisms, as well as their value as natural food. Here are some popular examples.

1. Nori or gamet (Porphyra, a red alga) – elixir,
claimed to be more potent than Viagra (photo)

2. Edible seaweeds - rich in iodine, vegetable substitute.
There is no known poisonous seaweed.

3. Seaweeds as source of natural antibiotics, much safer than conventional antibiotics.

4. Mushrooms have anti-cancer properties.(photo: author with wild mushroom from the field)

6. Cyanobacteria prolongs life, restores youthfulness.

7. Yeast is a health food

8. Yogurt is bacteria-fermented milk, health drink.

9. Carica and Mamordica extracts for medicine and health food

10. Organically grown food (without the use of chemical pesticide and fertilizer)

Dr. Domingo Tapiador (photo), a retired UN expert on agriculture and fisheries, helped initiate the introduction of Spirulina in the country. He showed me the capsule preparation produced in Japan. “Why can’t we grow Spirulina locally?” he asked.

Today a year after, there are successful pilot projects. Spirulina is not only good as human food but feeds as well. Prior to obtaining his doctorate degree, Professor Johnny Ching of Dela Salle University found out that Spirulina added to the feed ration of bangus improves growth rate. (MS Biology, UST). Similar studies point out to the beneficial effects of Spirulina on the daily weight gain in poultry and livestock. Earlier studies also discovered Azolla, an aquatic fern with a blue-green alga symbiont – Anabaena, as a valuable feed supplement to farm animals.

These lowly groups of organisms which cannot even qualify as plants, but instead protists with which protozoa are their kin, biologically speaking that is, are after all “giants.”

They hold the promise in providing food, medicine, clean environment, and as a whole, a better quality of human life for the people today and the coming generations.~
 ---------------

*The 2021 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2021) highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 55 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in the 2021 edition is the highest in the report’s five-year existence. The report is produced by the Global Network against Food Crises (which includes WFP), an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger.

** The theme for International Day for the Eradication of Poverty 2021 is “Building Forward Together: Ending Persistent Poverty, Respecting all People and our Planet”. How many people live below the international poverty line?
736 million people lived below the international poverty line of US $ 1.90 a day in 2015. In 2018, almost 8 per cent of the world’s workers and their families lived on less than US$1.90 per person per day. Most people living below the poverty line belong to two regions: Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

*** In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to size, output, or scale of operation, with cost per unit of output generally decreasing with increasing scale as fixed costs are spread out over more units of output.

Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid  738 DZRB AM Dr Abe Rotor and Ms Melly C Tenorio 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday

International Day for the 

Eradication of Poverty, 

October 17, 2022** 

---------------------------

ANNEX

A. Annual observance of World Food Day October 16, 2015. Theme: “Social Protection and Agriculture: Breaking the Cycle of Rural Poverty”, and how this links with the UN theme for Expo 2015, “The Zero Hunger Challenge · United for a sustainable world”.

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, 17 October 2015. Theme: Building a sustainable future: Coming together to end poverty and discrimination
 

My Nipa Hut, oil painting by AVRotor (2000)

Here is a plan of a Homesite - an ideal integrated garden around a home in a rural setting. Compare this with Bahay Kubo. Update it. Innovate it according to your concept, situation and needs. Allow innovations as long as these do not lose the essence of the plan. You can even expand the area, adding more features to it.

In effect, this Homesite model becomes a model farm, a Homestead - one that has economic and ecological attributes that characterize the concept of sustainable productivity cum aesthetics and educational values.


I invite all followers and readers of this Blog to adopt these models in their own capacities wherever they reside - in the rural or urban area - and whenever they find them feasible, and thus join the movement which PBH has been carrying on in the last twenty years or so.

It is for this nationwide campaign that PBH has earned, among other programs, the Oscar Florendo Award for Developmental Journalism, indeed a tribute to all those who have participated, and are going to participate, in the pursuit of the noble objectives of this campaign.

Draw an aerial view of an ideal Filipino home on the country side (homestead, meaning, the dwelling and homelot), based on the Bahay Kubo concept. Modify it to meet present situation, objectives and goals. Fit the lyrics into your illustration. Label properly. On another bond, "sell" (social marketing) your obra maestra, in an essay or feature. 
Bahay kubo, hahit munti, ang halaman doon ay sari-sari. Singkamas at talong, sigidillas at mani, sitao, batao, patani. Kondol, patola, upo, kalabasa, at sa ka mayroon pa, labanos, mustasa. Sibuyas, kamatis, bawang at luya, at ang paligidligid ay linga.

Nipa hut*, even though it is small
The plants it houses are varied
Turnip and eggplant, winged bean and peanut
String bean, hyacinth bean, lima bean.

Wax gourd, luffa**, white squash and pumpkin,
And there is also radish, mustard,
Onion, tomato, garlic, and ginger
And all around are sesame seeds.

Acknowledgment: Mama Zisa’s World
International Music & Culture

Why is the Bahay Kubo (Nipa Hut) and its variants in Asia and the Pacific Region (also in other parts of the world) gaining popularity? With eco-tourism and agro-tourism on the rise, economic difficulties notwithstanding, the bahay kubo is at center stage.

Tourists love it, and the bahay kubo bamboo craft industry is gaining popularity abroad. Bahay Kubo for export!

A bahay kubo is easy to make - structurally and aesthetically. It allows modification in size, dimension, design and make, usually with materials that are locally available. It is popularly affordable, a solution to the present housing problem.

No, it is not the shanty that is being pictured. The shanty, in fact, is the anti-thesis of the bahay kubo. It undermines its purpose and beauty, and most importantly, the pride and dignity of this symbol of Filipino heritage.

• Today it is common to see city homes having a bahay kubo in their backyard, so with tops of buildings. At a distance one can glimpse a bahay kubo perched on a high rise building.

• Vacation houses and beach cottages, also beer gardens and reception centers, are of the bahay kubo design and make.

• Imagine the tree house of the Swiss Family Robinson, in a novel of the same title by Johann Wyss. Let's not get far. Filipinos like to build houses on trees. There's one in Rosario (La Union) perched on a huge acacia tree.

• So with fancy doghouses and bird cages. Have you observed pig pens, poultry houses or sheds designed after the bahay kubo?

But these are but decorative and fancy, although functional in many respects. They are offshoots of imagination to combine the modern and the native. They bring out nostalgic feelings and relief among migrants from the old barrio. They introduce to the young tradition and the ways of our ancestors they only know from books, TV and the Internet. They too, enliven the spirit of pre-Hispanic culture, of being oriental, and nationalistic. Or to be different by not going with the uncharted current of change. And there are other reasons. But why the bahay kubo revived? Evolved?

• Going natural? Count the bahay kubo - no plastics, no paints, and the least use of non-biodegradable materials. It is a self-contained system of recycling.

• It is energy saving, in fact independent, save some lighting. Fireplace is designed for firewood, windows allow sunlight and breeze freely. There's no need of vacuum cleaner, polisher, and other amenities of an urban home.

• Nothing beats Going Natural by having fresh fruits and vegetables, clean air and water, adequate exercise from home and garden chores. And having trees and plants around. That's natural air conditioning.

• It's tranquil and cool, no echoing walls and ceiling, in fact it is acoustically efficient to deaden noise. More so with the trees; they absorb sound and dust, and keep humidity and temperature stable. They serve as natural windbreak, and barrier of sudden gusts.

The bahay kubo is a way to escape burgeoning city life - from heavy traffic, pollution, high tech, high finance, loaned amenities, busy lanes, to anxiety and depression. It cushions tendency of ostentatious living.





Evolution of the Bahay Kubo.  These models retain the essence of the Bahay Kubo Culture.

Move over American Bungalow. Here is Bahay Kubo revived and evolved.

Bahay kubo is the symbol of bayanihan or cooperativism. It is relocating a whole and intact house from one place to another in the same neighborhood, on bare shoulders, so to speak, in a festive and quaint atmosphere. It is our dream as a people to be strong the bayanihan way. And to live simply, naturally, happy, healthy, and long, with the whole family.

Mabuhay ang Bahay Kubo. ~

Bayanihan, painting by Lito Barcelona

Added reference: SEARCH earlier post, Bahay Kubo;Living with Nature, AVR; acknowledgment, Sheet Music Lisa Yannucci; painting Lito Barcelona, from Internet.

ANNEX B - Self-administered test 

Green Revolution at the Grassroots

Answer Key to Self-Administered Test (50 Items)

Dr Abe V Rotor

Food Hierarchy

Part 1: True or False

1. Green Revolution is a term that refers to the development of agriculture, tracing it from the time man settled down to raise animals and plants up to the present in which genetically modified organisms (GMO) of plants and animals are being produced.

2. Green revolution does not encompass agro-processing such as the making of brewed coffee beans, patis and bagoong, wine and vinegar, milk, cheese and ham, and the like – because these are beyond the farmer’s capability - financially and technically

3. Green revolution must fit well into the demands of the market, which means that the raising of crops and animal and all attendant activities must conform to such “market directed” principle

4. We are still nomadic like our primitive ancestors were, in the sense that we still derive much of our food and other needs from the sea, hills and forest. Furthermore, we travel far and wide from our homes and families in search of our basic economic needs – food, clothing, shelter and energy. This neo-nomadic syndrome has been spurred by our modern way of living influenced by overpopulation, industrialization, science and technology.

5. Growing affluence and increasing level of living standard takes us farther and farther away from the basic concept of green revolution, whereby ideally a family lives under one roof guaranteed by the bounty of the land the members cultivate, and historically built within framework of culture and tradition.

History tells us: Food shortage

leads to people's revolution

6. Based on the previous question, growing affluence and standard of living is the reason why modern China cannot prevent its thousands – nay millions – of young inhabitants to move out of the confines of a once socialistic confine in search of the Good Life that they very much deserve.

7. The least sprayed vegetables – that is, vegetables that do not necessarily require the application of pesticides – are those that grow wild. Thus the ruling is, the more native a vegetable is, the more resistant it is to pest.

8. Green Revolution started as a movement in the Philippines way back in the fifties with the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement during the time of President Ramon Magsaysay, with the youth at the helm, led by 4-H Clubs, Rural Improvement Clubs (RIC), Boys Scouts and Girls Scouts, public and elementary schoolchildren, and barrio folks.

9. The crowning glory of Philippine Green Revolution was the attainment of self-sufficiency in food and other agricultural products following a food crisis in the early seventies. Through M-99, Maisan 77, and many barangay food production programs, the country even surpassed sufficiency level and became a net exporter of rice and other food commodities.

10. When you introduce a new plant in your garden – a plant that has not been tried before – you are sure it is virtually free of pests, firstly because it did not bring with it the pests from its origin, and second, the local pests would take time to develop the taste for it.

11. The longest stage or phase of Green Revolution was the expansion of horizons during the colonial period whereby land was forcibly taken and consolidated into estates and haciendas by the colonists. One such case is our own haciendas, a number of them still are still existing and operating like President Cory’s family hacienda – Luisita – which was singularly exempted from land reform.

12. The corporate world swallowed up small businesses including small farms in the US, Europe and in fact all over the world, such that the capitalist robbed the entrepreneur of his resources, technology, market, and worst, his potentials and therefore his future. (Economies of scale –is this the nemesis of small business?)

 

"Native" food is more nutritious, safe from unwanted substances, available, and affordable. Can you identify the ingredients in each of these two food preparations?

13. Today’s fast emerging technologies continue to favor the capitalist thus making him grow even bigger (examples: McDonalds, San Miguel, Robina, Nestle’ and Jollibee conglomerate). This is what social scientists call Neo-colonialism, a kind of agriculture reminiscent of the colonial times. (Or is the trend today the opposite - the dinosaur syndrome is killing the beast.)

14. The most nutritious of all vegetables in terms of protein are those belonging to the legume family. In fact a number of legumes have higher protein content than meat.

15. If we rank from highest to lowest in protein content these vegetables should be listed as follows: soybean, segidillas or calamismis (pallang), mungo, tomato, malunggay.

16. It is better to specialize on certain crops in your garden for practical management. If leafy vegetables, plant pechay, lettuce, mustard, alugbati, talinum, and you need the same kind of soil, topography, amount of water, tools, planting schedule and season, and market.

17. Mang Tonio is a simple farmer. He plants rice in his small paddy once a year because this is what other farms are doing, and it is tradition in the area. They say don’t break away sa naka-ugalihan. If you agree with Mang Tonio answer true, if not false.

18. It is possible that a one-hectare farm can produce as much as a four-hectare farm does, even without additional amounts of inputs like fertilizer, pesticide and water.

Food poisoning comes mainly from processed food. Grow your own food instead. Garden-to-table food gives the best security, among other benefits.

19. The idea of cottage agro-industry is to make use of inferior quality products that bring more profit or value-added advantage. Examples: immature and broken peanut into butter, overripe banana and tomato for catsup, fruit fly infested guava and mango for puree; typhoon damaged sugarcane into vinegar, bansot piglet into lechon, unsold fish and shrimps into bagoong and patis, and the like.

20. Samaka is a movement, acronym of Samahan ng Masaganang Kakanin – the united effort of a group to have more plentiful food for their families. It is the precursor of successful food production programs later led by PACD (Presidential Arm in Community Development), RCPCC (Rice and Corn Production Coordinating Program) later to become National Food and Agriculture Council (NFAC) which implemented Masagana 99, Maisan 77, Manukan Barangay, Bakahang Barangay, Wheat Production, Soybean Production, and other production programs then under President Marcos. Unfortunately all these were virtually erased after the Edsa Revolution.

Don't be a captive of this bandwagon,

and victim of Fast Food Syndrome.

21. Botanically speaking, the parts of these plants we eat are classified as follows: cassava tuber is a root, so with kamote, peanut is a fruit, potato tuber is a stem, onion bulb is a leaf.

22. When buying papaya, the more yellow the fruit appears, the more mature it had been picked from the tree. Avoid buying papaya that appears dominantly green and yellow or orange only at the ridges.

23. There are five kinds of vegetables according to the parts of the plant (botanical classification). The following are classified under at least two kinds: squash or kalabasa, ampalaya, malunggay, sinkamas, short sitao or paayap.

24. The production capacity of genetically modified crops of corn, potato, and soybean – the most common GMO food we are taking every day - has increased even without increasing the supply of nutrients in the soil. GMOs are the world’s ultimate recourse to feed an ever increasing population now approaching the 6.5 billion mark.

25. Our soil and climate are favorable to many crops. Let us plant our rice fields and corn fields after harvest season with the following crops so that we will not import them and spend precious dollars, and that, it is the Filipino farmer and not the foreign farmer whom we patronize and subsidize. Potato (potato fries), Soybean (soybean oil, TVP, tokwa, toyo, taho), White beans (pork and beans), wheat (pandesal, cake, noodles).

Home Garden

• 1. Let’s make a Lazy Man’s Garden at Home. What are plants considered literally tanim ng tamad, a syndrome many Filipinos fall into, a little bit of every thing (tingi-tingi), ningas kogon, makakalimutin, kulang sa tiyaga, and mapabaya’: papaya, malunggay, siling katuray, ube, patola, kondol, upon, alugbati, talinum, patani, batao, segidillas, kumpitis.

• 2. Ano-ano ang mga halaman na nakakain na hindi itinatanim. (What edible plants simply grow spontaneously)

26. The role of Green Revolution generates in supplying food of a fast growing population is foremost even at the expense of clearing forest, leveling hillsides, reclaiming swamps – and even farming the sea.

27. Talinum is a small tree that is why it is so easy to grow, and will last for a long time, season after season and you have vegetables throughout the year. Alugbati is tree like malunggay. In fact they usually grow together in some forgotten corner, along dikes and fences, around open well, and does not need care at all practically speaking. Alugbati is best as salad, cooked with mungo, beef stew, sinigang, bulanglang.

28. Agro-ecology will always clash – there is no compromise. Either you are an ecologist or you are an economist. Take eco-tourism, eco-village, etc.)

29. All these plants are propagated by cutting. All you need to do is cut-and-plant a branch or stem – malunggay, kakawate or madre de cacao, katuray, ipil-ipil, cassava, sugarcane, talinum, alugbati, kamias.

30. Homesite for the Golden Years (HGY) which we launched on PBH last February 14 this year has the features of a integrated garden, enterprise, agro-industry, eco-sanctuary. The key is to supply this Patch of Eden (A Slice of Paradise) with all the amenities of modern living.

31. The area required for a Homesite for the Golden Years is greatly variable and flexible; it can be as small as 100 square meters to 10 hectares in area. This allows evolution of as many models as one could think of.

32. The numerous hanging round fruits (tubers) on the stem of ube are the ones we plant, especially on large scale.

33. Acclimatization means helping introduced plants and animals get adapted to their new environment. There are those that succeed but can’t reproduce; while others become better of that their counterparts they left behind.

34. Based on the previous question, there are plants that have not been fully acclimatized even after many years so that extreme attention is given to them like Crucifers – cauliflower, cabbage, wonbok, celery, lettuce, broccoli.

35. Bagging with ordinary paper and/or plastic bags and sacks is necessary to protect from the dreaded fruit fly the fruits of guava, mango, jackfruit, ampalaya, durian, orange, avocado, mangosteen, guyabano and atis.

36. Green thumb is a gift of naturalism. Only those who have this genetic gift are chosen caretakers of God’s Garden of Eden. Others have the equivalent gift in taking care of aquariums, house pets, children’s nursery.

37. We have our local pansit: sotanghon comes from rice while bihon comes mungo. We import noodles, miki and lomi made from wheat, while macaroni and spaghetti are made from semolina wheat or pasta.

Alternative food source: Spirulina is a one-celled protein food traced to our ancestors.

38. Value-added, a term in manufacturing gave rise to a new taxation E-VAT. To cope up with the added burden on the part of both entrepreneur and consumer, why not process your product and get instead the benefit of the new law? Example. Don’t just sell your palay harvest, have it milled sold as rice, make flour out of it, make puto and bihon, and others.

39. Based on the same question above, to get the benefits of VAT, market your own produce; be an entrepreneur, a middleman/trader and of course, a producer.

40. Start by planting the seeds of the following crops if you go wish into immediate commercial production – because the seeds of these plants are plentiful, you have no problem of supply: chico, guava, orange, mango, rambutan, lanzones, avocado, tiesa, atis, guayabano – as well as others that produce plenty of seeds. That’s how nature intended it to be.

     Food Crisis: Either we do not have enough or we cannot afford to have enough.

41. Seeds always turn out genetically true to type. Big mango fruits come from seeds of big mango fruits, big guava means big guava, sweet pomelo – sweet pomelo, seedless atis – seedless atis, red pakwan – red pakwan.

42. Just follow the direction of the sun when you plant by rows and plots – north to south, so that there is less overshadowing of plants. In this case you may increase your harvest by as much as 10 percent.

43. Extend the shelf life of fruits such as mango, avocado, atis, guayabano, nangka, by rubbing salt at the end of the stem, the base of the fruit.

44. Momordica charantia is the scientific name of ampalaya. Why spend for commercial food supplement in bottle, syrup, tablets, pills or dry herbal preparations as advertised - Momordica or Charantia, or Ampalaya Plus? (Write true for each recipe, if correct)

• All you need is buy a bundle of fresh ampalaya tops made into salad and dipped with bagoong and vinegar. It’s good for the whole family.

• Or add ampalaya leaves to mungo and dried fish or sautéed pork.

• Pinakbet anyone? Native or wild ampalaya cut in half or quarter without severing the cut.

• Ampalaya at delatang sardinas.

50. Ordinary people like anyone of us can secure for ourselves and family enough food and proper nutrition. This is food security in action. It is food security that gives us real peace of mind. The biological basis does not need farther explanation. It is the key to unity and harmony in the living world. Queuing for rice defeats the image of a strong economy. High prices of food do not give a good reflection either. How about ASEA, UN, WHO? ASEAN commitment to regional food security, food aid from the UN or US may simply ease the impact of food shortage or inequity in its distribution, but they are but palliative measures. And having a dreamer Joseph in public food depot is not reliable either. It is green revolution at the grassroots that assures us of not only food but other necessities of life – and self employment. It is that piece of Paradise that has long been lost that resurrect in some corner of your home. Paradise is not lost, if you create one. Do you agree?

Let us protect our own products against imported and smuggled fruits and vegetables.

Trivia:
Who is Who in the field of agriculture and life science in the Philippines
1. If there is a Luther Burbank, the American plant wizard, who is our own in the Philippines (___________________________, foremost plant breeder of the Philippines)

2. The greatest and most popular authority of medicinal plants in the Philippines (___________________________, Medicinal Plants of the Philippines)

3. Filipino scientist who occupied the highest position in the UN FAO? (________________________, Regional chief of UN-FAO for Asia and the Pacific)

4. Her name is an institution in children's health care, founder of Children's Hospital and inventor of nursery incubation chamber, among other invention (___________________)

5. His discovery of the cause of cadang-cadang disease of coconut lead to effective control of the disease threatening to wipeout the coconut industry in the Philippines (________________________________)

6. First director or International Institute for Rural Reconstruction, author of Alternative Medicine, anti-smoking in public places, school and advertisement. (_____________________________)

7. Man behind food self-sufficiency, M-99 that led the Philippine among the top rice producers in the 70s and 80s. (_______________________, Secretary of agriculture)

8. First Filipino allergologist, discovered a syndrome named after him, internationally adapted in hospitals and medical schools, served as executive secretary of presidents Quezon and Osmeña, discovered orchids also named after him. (___________________________).

9. Founder of the Nursing profession, brought into the profession respectability and dignity, service and selflessness, (_________________________, nationality ________________)

10. The greatest woman who ever lived in our times - epitome of love, compassion, faith, selflessness and dedication, a living saint (though less popular than Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana, In fact there were far less number people who paid their respects to her than Princess Diana who died and was buried at the same time.) _______________________ of ________________.

x x x

ANSWERS: Part 1: 1t 2f 3t 4t 5f 6t 7t 8t 9t 10f 11f 12t 13t 14t 15f 16f 17f 18t 19f 20t 21t 22f 23t 24f 25f 26f 27f 28f 29f 30t 31f 32f 33t 34t 35f 36f 37t 38t 39t 40f 41f 42f 43f 44 to 49 (all true) 50t

Part 2: 1. Nemesio Mendiola 2.Eduardo Quisumbing 3.Dioscorro Umali 4. Fe del Mundo 5. Gerardo Ocfemia 6.Juan Flavier 7. Arturo Tanco Jr 8.Arturo B Rotor 9. Florence Nightingale 10.Mother Teresa of Calcutta ~

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Internet and other sources for the images shown in this article.

 

Locally produced vegetables. Can you identify each one?

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Trivia: Ants on the move means that a strong rain, if not a typhoon, is coming. Cockroaches come out of their abode and seek for shelter outside.

Red fire ant (Solenopsis geminata)

The biological clock of these creatures responds to invisible signals, which comprise decreased atmospheric pressure, high relative humidity and air temperature. Their sensitive antennae and tactile hairs covering their body pick these up these changes of the environment. Thus we find ants in exodus, they move as a colony carrying their eggs and young indoors.

 Cockroaches become unusually active, flying about in frenzy, in search for a new place. There is a common message, that is, to escape to safer ground, an archetype engrained in their genes passed on to them by their ancestors through evolution.

American cockroach (Periplaneta ameicana)