Usapang Bayan Session 4 Friday 2-3 pm March 28, 2025
People’s Green Revolution: Home Biotechnology, Practical Household Management,
Home Gardening, Austere Living
Dr Abe V Rotor
"The green revolution has an entirely different meaning to most people in the affluent nations of the privileged world than to those in the developing nations of the forgotten world." - Norman Borlaug (Nobel Prize awardee, often called "the father of the Green Revolution", and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.)
Part 1 - Home Biotechnology
Part 2 - Practical Household Management
Part 3 - Home Gardening
Part 4 - Austere Living (Pagtitipid): Self-evaluation, 25 items
We wake up to the fresh aroma of coffee, chocolate, vanilla, the cured taste of dried tapa, tinapa, ham and bacon – all these are products of a mysterious process we generally call fermentation.
Aged wine is mellower, cured tobacco is more aromatic, naturally ripened fruits are sweeter, dried prunes, raisin and dates have higher sugar content and have longer shelf life. Seasoned toyo, bagoong and patis make fine cuisine, so with vanilla, chili, laurel, banana blossom, and annatto.
Why many foods taste better after allowing them to stand for sometime! Take suman, tupig, puto, bibingka, and the like. The real taste of pinakbet comes out an hour or two after it has been cooked. So with the Ilocos dinuguan.
Thanks to the myriads of beneficial microorganisms, and the complex chemistry working in our favor even while we are asleep. Indeed Nature works silently through her invisible agents and processes.
The vast potential uses of microorganisms - bacteria, algae, fungi and the like - in providing food, medicine and better environment to supply the requirements of our fast growing population and standard of living are being tapped by biotechnology. Biotechnology hand in hand with genetic engineering dominate the Green Revolution of this century – the fourth since Neolithic time.
Let me cite particular areas of biotechnology in which small entrepreneurs play a vital role and which they have proven themselves successful in one way or the other. The first group involves the production of alcoholic drinks and vinegar through fermentation. These products are
§ Tapoy (rice wine of the Cordillera equivalent to the Japanese kampei)
§ Basi (sugarcane)
§ Lambanog (distilled coconut wine)
§ Tuba (young wine from coconut)
§ Layaw (nipa)
§ Bahalina (coconut and tangal)
§ Fruit wine (kasoy, bignay, strawberry, pineapple, etc.)
§ Root crop wine (potato, kamote, cassava, yakon)
§ Beer (malted corn, rice, sorghum, barley, wheat, rye)
§ Vinegar (nipa, sugarcane, coconut, various fruits)
Basi, pride of the Ilocos Region; and rice wine, indigenous
drink of the Cordillera region.
With readily available raw materials and simple tools used, brewing is a practical industry. More so, with the simplicity of fermentation itself - which is the conversion of sugar into ethanol through fermentation with yeast, as shown in this general formula?
C6H12O6 ------- 2C2H5OH + 2CO2
Sugar to Wine
This equation applies to all kinds of wine and beer in the world, varying only in the source of materials and technical aspects, cultural uniqueness notwithstanding. This is why wine making is universal. It is engrained in culture and history, and in all human activities. No ceremony is without wine. It is symbolic of religious faith and belief. And while there are popular brands in the market, still the best wine is found in the farmer’s cellar in Europe and Asia, or elsewhere.
The brewed product is either consumed immediately or allowed to age. Aging improves quality and lengthens the shelf life of the product. Wine making is an art, and a personalized enterprise, with each vintage or cellar having a distinctive quality trademark. Bordeaux in France for example, is famous for brandy, while the Scotch Whiskey remains a top grade liquor made from grains. Similarly we have basi in Ilocos, bahalina in the Visayas and lambanog in Southern Tagalog.
Wine does not go to waste if it fails to meet standards. And even if the brew is left unattended. Nature makes wine to vinegar. Vin-egar means sour wine. In chemistry it is oxidized ethyl alcohol, the product of which is acetic acid, as shown in this formula, similarly a universal one.
C2H5OH + O2 à CH3COOH + H2O
Wine or Ethyl Alcohol to Acetic Acid
Vinegar is perhaps the most common food preservative and additive. It is often associated with the local source such as Sukang Iloko and Sukang Paombong. Or material – sasa from nipa, pineapple vinegar, apple cider vinegar, etc.
Vinegar has many uses outside of the kitchen. Weed killer, bleaching agent, pesticide, drainage declogger, odor remover, etc. Many industries rely on this organic substance from food to textile to metallurgy.
The second group of products of village biotechnology are beverages, food condiments, tobacco and betel for chewing. Tea, coffee, fruit juice and chocolate, in this order, make up the world’s top beverages, thus pointing out the vast opportunities of biotechnology in this area.
§ Kapeng barako (Batangas and Cavite)
§ Cacao (Batangas, Mindanao)
§ Vanilla (Mindanao)
§ Tsaa (Batangas)
§ Fruit puree (mango, guyabano, pineapple, etc.,
Southern Tagalog, Mindanao)
§ Bagoong and patis (Navotas, Balayan, Dagupan)
§ Kesong Puti (Laguna)
§ Betel (Cordillera, Laguna, Ilocos)
§ Ketsup (banana, tomato)
§ Rolled tobacco (Cagayan Valley, Ilocos)Toyo (Southern Tagalog, Mindanao)
Like in the first group, these products are area-specific which point out to their indigenous production and processing, so with their patronage. Rolled tobacco or pinadis, for example, has a special market for old people who are used to the product – and not to the younger generation. This is also true with betel or nganga.
On the other hand, bagoong and patis, which used to be a specialty among Ilocanos, are now marketed abroad. So with kapeng barako a local coffee which is mainly grown in the highlands of Batangas and Tagaytay?
Fruit puree and fruit preserve, though relatively new, are amazingly growing fast, as people are shunning away from carbonated drinks. Because of high demand, these products became a boom to small growers, who recently are becoming mere conduits or raw products suppliers of big companies, instead of making and marketing the finished products themselves.
The third and largest group of village biotechnology products is in processed food.
§ Puto or rice cake, very popular among Filipinos
§ Bibingka (rice)
§ Maja (corn starch)
§ Burong manggang paho, mustasa (pickled mango, mustard)
§ Burong Isda (dalag and rice)
§ Hamon (manok, baboy, pato) ham
§ Tocino, longganisa
§ Itlog na pula and century egg
§ Balot and Penoy (incubated duck egg)
§ Tokwa (bean curd)
§ Taosi (fermented black bean)
§ Talangka (crab paste)
§ Pickles (papaya, carrot, amargoso, onion, cucumber, etc.)
§ Toge (mungo sprout)
§ Cakes (banana, cassava)
§ Ripening of fruits (with madre de cacao leaves)
Food processing constitutes the bulk of village biotechnology in developing countries, on both domestic and commercial scales. Like in the other groups, these undertakings are seldom organized as formal establishments; rather they fall under the category of informal economics which is life line of the people especially in these critical times.
The pioneering group, are the so-called “One-Celled Protein” food, a new term in food production by algae, fungi and bacteria. Actually many of these have long been known even in primitive societies because they grow in the wild.
· Spirulina (blue-green alga or BGA)
· Chlorella (green alga)
· Nostoc (BGA as food and fertilizer)
· Anabaena (BGA in symbiosis with Azolla a floating fern, for fertilizer and food)
· Nata - nata de coco, nata de piña (Leuconostoc mesenteroides, a capsule bacterium)
· Mushrooms –Pleurotus (abalone mushroom), Shitaki (black mushroom), Volvariella (banana mushrrom), Agaricus (rice hay mushroom), Auricularia or “tainga ng daga,” and many other edible mushrooms, cultivated or wild.
· Chlorella (green alga)
· Nostoc (BGA as food and fertilizer)
· Anabaena (BGA in symbiosis with Azolla a floating fern, for fertilizer and food)
· Nata - nata de coco, nata de piña (Leuconostoc mesenteroides, a capsule bacterium)
· Mushrooms –Pleurotus (abalone mushroom), Shitaki (black mushroom), Volvariella (banana mushrrom), Agaricus (rice hay mushroom), Auricularia or “tainga ng daga,” and many other edible mushrooms, cultivated or wild.
Let’s strive to make village biotechnology truly a Green Revolution of, for and by the people.
Part 2
Practical Household Management Tips
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Sugar solution extends the life of cut flowers. In horticulture, they call this pulsing. Cake made of rice flour, instead of wheat flour.
7. Sugar solution extends the life of cut flowers.
In horticulture, they call this pulsing, a technique of providing nourishment and extending the shelf life of cut flowers. This technique lengthens vase life twice as much. It allows buds to open and postpones stem collapse, while it enhances freshness of the opened flowers.
8. Pulsing for roses is done by immersing the stem ends for one to three hours in 10% sugar solution, and for gladiolus 12 to 24 hours in 20% sugar solution. Daisies, carnation, chrysanthemums, and the like are better handled if harvested and transported in their immature stage, then opened by pulsing. It is best to cut the stem at an angle, dipped 6 to 12 hours in 10% sugar solution compounded with 200 ppm of 8-hydroxyquinoline sulfate, 100 ppm citric acid. Best results are obtained at cool temperature and low relative humidity.
9. Press the base of the jaw joint to relieve toothache. There’s a saying that when your tooth aches, there’s nothing you can do about it except to take painkiller. Mabuti pa ang sakit ng tiyan. At least for stomach ache you can manage to find a comfortable position, or press the painful part to secure relief.
But here is a simple remedy Dr. Vanda Hernandez, school dentist of St. Paul University QC, demonstrated which I found to be effective. There is a mass of nerve cells called Gasserian ganglion that connects the nerves of the gums and teeth, and their surroundings. Now this is how the simple remedy works. Open your mouth wide, feel where the joint of the jaw is located. Now close your mouth and press this nerve center with the finger until you obtain relief. Do this along the side of the affected tooth. Repeat until pain subsides. Once you have practiced the technique, you can do it discreetly even with people around when the need arises.
10. Smoke therapy (suob) – old folks’ aroma therapy.
Basang, my auntie who took care of me when I was a child, was sick and dying. Doctor Catalino, our rural physician, gave her injection but her condition did not improve, and now she was in a pit of convulsion. As a last ditch Cousin Bistra who knew something about herbal cure gathered leaves of kamias (Averrhoa balimbi) and roasted it on charcoal until a characteristic aroma began to fill the room. Fanning it over the patient face, with prayers chanted, Basang began to calm down, the color of her skin improved, and soon fell into deep sleep.
Dr. Precila Delima who finished a doctorate degree in biology in UST related in class a practice among the Ibanag of Cagayan of using suob by mothers who have just given birth. Garlic and shallot onion (Sibuyas Tagalog) are roasted on charcoal, and packed with cloth. While still warm the patient sits on the pack for several minutes, with her whole body covered with blanket. She perspires profusely, eliminating wastes and toxins from her body. The whole procedure is closely attended to by the “olds” in the family with the direction of the village manghihilot or homegrown midwife (kumadrona or partera Ilk.). Old folks believe that this practice is important because it drives out evil spirits or wards them off in order to prepare the way the mother faces the crucial responsibility of motherhood – after child bearing follows the bigger task - child rearing. (Precila Delima, Ph.D. is presently Executive Officer at Isabela State University. Isabela State University. Cauayan, Cagayan Valley),
11. If the father or mother leaves the house, place the clothes he or she last worn beside the sleeping child so that he goes into deep sleep. This is pheromones in action. Pheromones are chemical signals for bonding in the animal world, and among humans. Like the queen bee that keeps its colony intact through pheromones, so we are attracted by a similar odor, although of a less specific one. People are compatible through smell. Pheromones are left in clothes and other belongings, so that a baby may remain fast asleep as if he were in his mother’s or father’s arms.
12. Don’t eat between meals, old folks advise.
Coffee break is a corporate invention, and snacks are the first version of fast food, thanks to capitalism. So why take heed of the old advice?
Well, let’s look at it this way. Our old folks take heavy meals, mainly rice or corn, depending on the region they live, and they do not eat anything in between meals. Yet they work for long hours, and are healthy. How is that?
Starch in cereals is polysaccharide, which means that it has to be broken down into simple sugar before it is “burned” by the body to release energy. Starch has to be hydrolyzed with the aid of enzyme (amylase) found in our digestive system. Glucose, the ultimate product is broken down through oxidation (respiration), providing the needed energy for various body functions. This transformation takes hours, releasing energy throughout the process, and by the time the fuel is exhausted, it is time for the next meal. This is a simple test. Have you experienced having a grain of rice unknowingly tucked between the gums and teeth? After an hour of so, the grain taste sweet. It means that the grain is undergoing hydrolysis – from starch to sugar.
White sugar (sucrose), on the other hand is directly burned, after it has been split into two monosaccharides. That is why too much white sugar leads to high blood sugar – if we do not burn it – and may in the long run become the cause of diabetes.
This eating regimen of old folks may apply to manual workers, principally in the field. Today we find this virtually impossible to follow. First, we need a lot of energy, mainly for the brain, and secondly, we are already accustomed to having snacks. In fact many of us never stop eating. A foreigner once commented, “Filipinos are always eating.” What with all the advertisements - from TV commercials to giant billboards - and the proliferation of food carts and stores. ~
Other household tips:
*Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday
Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature - School on Blog
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Sugar solution extends the life of cut flowers. In horticulture, they call this pulsing. Cake made of rice flour, instead of wheat flour. This is a continuing list of practical household management tips, which can be followed easily, and shared with the members of the family, friends, in the school and community. Learn and perfect each tip through demonstration. Illustrate or photograph each tip. Compile into a manual.
1. Cut spent toothpaste tube and glean on remaining content. You can have as much as five brushing. Use remaining paste as hand-wash to remove grease and fishy odor.
2. Don't dispose used cooking oil in sink. It reacts with detergent and solidifies like soap - the same process called saponification, blocking drainage canal and sewer.
3. Rice weevil can be controlled by placing crushed bulb of garlic in the stored rice. Loosely wrap garlic with cloth or paper. Cover the box. In a day or two, the weevils succumb to the garlic odor. Others simply escape.
4. Make your own hand wash detergent. Scrape soap with knife, dissolve in water. Presto! You can have all the hand wash you need. Use your formula to refill empty dispensers. Label with the soap you used and the dilution you made. Avoid commercial concentrated brands - they are too strong, and dangerous to children.
5. Protect tip of pencil with rolled paper which serves as cap to extend the life of the pencil, and prevent accident. Use gloss, colored paper - the kind used as p. You can also roll it as extender when the pencil becomes too short, thus maximizing its use. promo leaflets. Instead of refusing, or throwing it away, you can make a beautiful pencil canister.
6. Garden pots from PET bottles, 1- to 2-liter content. It’s free, whereas commercial garden pots are expensive. Cut at midsection with a sharp knife or blade; puncture three equidistant holes on the side, an inch from the base, not at the bottom. This is to keep reserve water for the plant. Plant one kind per pot: oregano, alugbati, kamote, kangkong, ginger, onion, garlic, mustard, pechay, and the like. Scrape some topsoil for your planting medium. There’s no need of fertilizer and pesticide. Keep a pot or two of growing garlic or onion, also ginger; they are insect repellents.
1. Cut spent toothpaste tube and glean on remaining content. You can have as much as five brushing. Use remaining paste as hand-wash to remove grease and fishy odor.
2. Don't dispose used cooking oil in sink. It reacts with detergent and solidifies like soap - the same process called saponification, blocking drainage canal and sewer.
3. Rice weevil can be controlled by placing crushed bulb of garlic in the stored rice. Loosely wrap garlic with cloth or paper. Cover the box. In a day or two, the weevils succumb to the garlic odor. Others simply escape.
4. Make your own hand wash detergent. Scrape soap with knife, dissolve in water. Presto! You can have all the hand wash you need. Use your formula to refill empty dispensers. Label with the soap you used and the dilution you made. Avoid commercial concentrated brands - they are too strong, and dangerous to children.
5. Protect tip of pencil with rolled paper which serves as cap to extend the life of the pencil, and prevent accident. Use gloss, colored paper - the kind used as p. You can also roll it as extender when the pencil becomes too short, thus maximizing its use. promo leaflets. Instead of refusing, or throwing it away, you can make a beautiful pencil canister.
6. Garden pots from PET bottles, 1- to 2-liter content. It’s free, whereas commercial garden pots are expensive. Cut at midsection with a sharp knife or blade; puncture three equidistant holes on the side, an inch from the base, not at the bottom. This is to keep reserve water for the plant. Plant one kind per pot: oregano, alugbati, kamote, kangkong, ginger, onion, garlic, mustard, pechay, and the like. Scrape some topsoil for your planting medium. There’s no need of fertilizer and pesticide. Keep a pot or two of growing garlic or onion, also ginger; they are insect repellents.
Garlic in PET garden pot
7. Sugar solution extends the life of cut flowers.
In horticulture, they call this pulsing, a technique of providing nourishment and extending the shelf life of cut flowers. This technique lengthens vase life twice as much. It allows buds to open and postpones stem collapse, while it enhances freshness of the opened flowers.
8. Pulsing for roses is done by immersing the stem ends for one to three hours in 10% sugar solution, and for gladiolus 12 to 24 hours in 20% sugar solution. Daisies, carnation, chrysanthemums, and the like are better handled if harvested and transported in their immature stage, then opened by pulsing. It is best to cut the stem at an angle, dipped 6 to 12 hours in 10% sugar solution compounded with 200 ppm of 8-hydroxyquinoline sulfate, 100 ppm citric acid. Best results are obtained at cool temperature and low relative humidity.
9. Press the base of the jaw joint to relieve toothache. There’s a saying that when your tooth aches, there’s nothing you can do about it except to take painkiller. Mabuti pa ang sakit ng tiyan. At least for stomach ache you can manage to find a comfortable position, or press the painful part to secure relief.
But here is a simple remedy Dr. Vanda Hernandez, school dentist of St. Paul University QC, demonstrated which I found to be effective. There is a mass of nerve cells called Gasserian ganglion that connects the nerves of the gums and teeth, and their surroundings. Now this is how the simple remedy works. Open your mouth wide, feel where the joint of the jaw is located. Now close your mouth and press this nerve center with the finger until you obtain relief. Do this along the side of the affected tooth. Repeat until pain subsides. Once you have practiced the technique, you can do it discreetly even with people around when the need arises.
10. Smoke therapy (suob) – old folks’ aroma therapy.
Basang, my auntie who took care of me when I was a child, was sick and dying. Doctor Catalino, our rural physician, gave her injection but her condition did not improve, and now she was in a pit of convulsion. As a last ditch Cousin Bistra who knew something about herbal cure gathered leaves of kamias (Averrhoa balimbi) and roasted it on charcoal until a characteristic aroma began to fill the room. Fanning it over the patient face, with prayers chanted, Basang began to calm down, the color of her skin improved, and soon fell into deep sleep.
11. If the father or mother leaves the house, place the clothes he or she last worn beside the sleeping child so that he goes into deep sleep. This is pheromones in action. Pheromones are chemical signals for bonding in the animal world, and among humans. Like the queen bee that keeps its colony intact through pheromones, so we are attracted by a similar odor, although of a less specific one. People are compatible through smell. Pheromones are left in clothes and other belongings, so that a baby may remain fast asleep as if he were in his mother’s or father’s arms.
12. Don’t eat between meals, old folks advise.
Coffee break is a corporate invention, and snacks are the first version of fast food, thanks to capitalism. So why take heed of the old advice?
Well, let’s look at it this way. Our old folks take heavy meals, mainly rice or corn, depending on the region they live, and they do not eat anything in between meals. Yet they work for long hours, and are healthy. How is that?
Starch in cereals is polysaccharide, which means that it has to be broken down into simple sugar before it is “burned” by the body to release energy. Starch has to be hydrolyzed with the aid of enzyme (amylase) found in our digestive system. Glucose, the ultimate product is broken down through oxidation (respiration), providing the needed energy for various body functions. This transformation takes hours, releasing energy throughout the process, and by the time the fuel is exhausted, it is time for the next meal. This is a simple test. Have you experienced having a grain of rice unknowingly tucked between the gums and teeth? After an hour of so, the grain taste sweet. It means that the grain is undergoing hydrolysis – from starch to sugar.
White sugar (sucrose), on the other hand is directly burned, after it has been split into two monosaccharides. That is why too much white sugar leads to high blood sugar – if we do not burn it – and may in the long run become the cause of diabetes.
This eating regimen of old folks may apply to manual workers, principally in the field. Today we find this virtually impossible to follow. First, we need a lot of energy, mainly for the brain, and secondly, we are already accustomed to having snacks. In fact many of us never stop eating. A foreigner once commented, “Filipinos are always eating.” What with all the advertisements - from TV commercials to giant billboards - and the proliferation of food carts and stores. ~
Other household tips:
Homemade calamansi juice
Wild vegetables: and alugbati and talinum on the backyard,
Ensure long shelf life of garlic and onion (shallot) by hanging them
in a cool and dark place.
Italian oregano: for cough remedy, and Italian cooking. Malunggay,
is a common backyard vegetable.
738 DZRB AM, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday
Part 3 - Home Gardening - buffer against spiraling prices of food and other commodities
"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."
Plants every home garden must have
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) Dr Abe V Rotor
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: - Onion (shallot or bulb)
- Papaya
- Guava
- Sorosoro (karimbuaya Ilk)
- Oregano
- Lagundi
- Sambong
- Lemon or kalamansi
- Luya (ginger)
- 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.
- Kangkong
- Gabi
- Sugarcane for chewing
Here are some suggested plants to include.
- Kutchai (photo, right)
- Siling labuyo
- Kamote
- Yerba buena (mint)
- Ampalaya
- Tsaang Gubat or wild tea (photo, top)
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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 4 - Austerity
Are you living an austere life?
Self-evaluation, 25 items
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Austere Life on the Countryside, painting by the author
Austerity is practiced where there is not much money, so that money is spent only on things that are necessary. It is a condition of living without unnecessary things; a practice,habit, or experience of living with limited resources. Austerity is a necessary economic tool of survival - and recovery - during difficult times, often as a policy of government. On the other hand, austerity is regarded as a virtue in the light of freeing oneself from the clutches of ostentatious and luxurious living.
Austere living keeps families and communities closer, a collective way to enjoy life with the least amenities, devoid of ostentatious show of wealth. Answer Yes to items you are presently practicing and/or those which you agree with.
1. You would rather buy things in bulk (paint, cooking oil, rice), or by the dozens (eggs, soft drinks) for ready supply at home, particularly these days when prices are increasing and supply is unpredictable.
2. You keep these tools and materials which you personally use now and then in various handiwork such as house repairs and gardening: a pair of pliers, hammer, set of screw driver, nails and screws, GI wires, electrical tester, and the like.
3. You would rather have your laundry and ironing once a week rather than daily or every other day, scheduling it usually on a weekend, thus saving precious water and electricity, and getting more helping hands from the family.
4. As a general policy of any state, the government should pursue a self sufficiency program in food, particularly staple (rice and corn) as the best way to insure food security, even if there is adequate supply in the world market.
5. In economics, austerity is when a national government reduces its spending in order to pay back creditors. Austerity is usually required when a government’s fiscal deficit spending is felt to be unsustainable. Austerity must cut down spending on development projects (countryside development funds from pork barrel), welfare and other social programs (subsidies and charitable expenditures).
7. The best way to save money is to set aside immediately a part of your salary, say 20 percent, and budget strictly the 80 percent. This is more effective than setting 20 percent after having budgeted and spent 80 percent of your salary.
8. You participate in the informal economy just like the farmer’s wife who goes to market to sell farm products and comes back with various household supplies. This is contemporary barter system. This is entrepreneurship on the grassroots.
9. Food supplementation reduces our dependence on conventional food, discovery of new food sources like seaweeds, wild food plants, as well as the discovery of new ways to prepare food comes at the heels of austere living. Hamburger from banana flower (puso), roasted rice for coffee or roasted corn, papait vegetable, sea cucumber, kuhol, the many uses of gabi, substitution of wheat flour with rice flour. Substitution of staple food with root crops (camote, cassava) to save on precious rice.
10. Postharvest losses reduces our supply, in fact to one-half, that by saving even only 10 percent of what is wasted, would be sufficient to fill up our annual deficit in rice and corn. Austerity is reducing our waste on all levels – production, post production, food preparation.
11. Austerity is the most practical weapon to fight obesity. It means avoidance of junk food, moderation in eating, and consumption of natural food. It is also favorable to health. Less kidney trouble, liver ailment, cardiac problem, high blood pressure. It means less hospital cases, cancer, ulcers, less alcohol consumption, etc. Austerity means natural beauty, good fit, good stride, and happy disposition.
12. There are more and more good schools in the provinces and chartered cities. We would rather send our children in these schools for practical reasons.
13. Grains would rather be used directly as food and lessen the amount of using them in producing animal protein by feeding the grains to poultry and animals. By doing this we maximize the value of food and make them available to ordinary people.
14. Israel as an emerging new state adopted an austerity program lasting for 10 years (1949-1959). When USSR collapsed, Cuba adopted an austerity policy (1991 onwards) to be able to survive as an “orphaned socialist” state. Austerity is aimed at attaining self-reliance at a time of crisis.
15. Private banks or institutions like IMP may require a country pursues an austerity policy if it wants to re-finance loans that are about to come due. The government may be asked to stop issuing subsidies or to otherwise reduce public spending. We call this as “IMF conditionality.”
16. People’s power – the cry of the first EDSA Revolution – fizzled out because the newly acquired empowerment was not used put to proper use as evidenced by unsuccessful cooperative movement, agrarian reform which turned out to be confrontational between right of property and right of tillage, rampant and blatant graft and corruption in the government, declined productivity in agriculture and industry, spread of poverty.
17. Family planning refers to limiting the number as well as proper spacing of your children. If there is a sin of commission or omission, there is also a sin of neglect – and if that neglect is within the knowledge of the sinner, and the consequence is the ruin of the lives of those under his care as parent, atonement is almost unthinkable.
It's time for the family and clan to stick together in weathering down the effects of economic crisis.
19. Youth today are torn between choices of white collar jobs and blue collar jobs. They are lured to easy education – diploma mill, and on the modern method of leaning on the computer which actually does not offer an “end course” that makes one a professional like a doctor, lawyer, agriculturist, and the like. Austerity calls for a re-definition of courses that are functional in nature and p[practical in application, and relevant to the changing times.
20. Limits to growth come like a moving vehicle suddenly running out of fuel, its tires worn-out and flat, engine conking out, while the road is getting rougher, narrower and steeper. Austerity is applying the brakes before all of these happen. It is anticipating the limits to growth, before it turns against you.
- People for manpower turning overpopulation, unemployment
- Industrial growth turning out pollution
- Agriculture causing erosion, siltation; invading wildlife
Austerity brings awareness, it gives us time to plan out, to review our goals in these difficult times.
22. Modeling of successful projects such as coops (farmers multipurpose cops), agro-eco center (Cabiokid), Kabsaka (Sta. Barbara, Iloilo), mangrove farming, seaweed farming, Irrigators’ association, Dr. Parra of Iloilo – these must ride on Filipino trait of gaya-gaya. Gaya-gaya put to good use. Peer teaching and learning is effective among the masses, and should be complementary with formal education. Austerity opens a gateway to look into models we can adopt under our local conditions.
23. “Necessity is the mother of invention," so “crisis is the sphinx of survival.” (Story of the Sphinx.) What is it that walks on all fours in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening?”) Crisis is Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. It rewards the strong, eliminates the weak, humbles the proud, deepens the soul, and elevates the spirit. - of those who can make it.” Crisis is the time to test man’s soul.” Soul is the ultimate of man’s capacity to survive. (Thesis of Victor Frankl – A Search for Meaning)
Reference on living close to nature by the author
25. The more closely related supply and demand cycle in a given community, the more self-reliant the community is. This means that in that community, people produce what they consume; consumption motivates production and vice versa. This according to Dr. Anselmo Cabigan is a basic tenet of austerity, because the self-reliant community becomes less dependent on external factors and the vagaries of the larger environment.
When does Austerity come in? Wartime, recession and depression (US), epidemic, high inflation, queuing for food, disaster, embargo (N Korea), new settlements, poor harvest, political turmoil, religious conflict, El Niño, cyclone (Burma), earthquake (China), etc.
All questions are answered with Yes. You may use these items as your ready guide and reference for your home, school, and community outreach program.
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