TRIBUTE TO THE WOMEN IN MY LIFE

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

As I confessed in a previous column or probably a blog, I grew up in a family of women. Due to my father’s early death at 23 years old, I spent my childhood and a great part of my adult years in the company of my Grandmother, whom I called Inay Tanda;  Mother, my Inay Bata; and my younger Sister Lilia. Hence, what I know about women, I came to know initially from this unique family situation and from being involved with a few women as lover, loved one or occasionally both, in the course of a lifetime, which has now spanned over seven decades.

This being women’s month, March, which is about to end in a few days, I would like to say something about women, their role in my life and others, and contribute hopefully to the global advocacy for gender advocacy. We need to join this campaign to help prevent inflicting physical or emotional pain on women which we do out of habit or mindless pursuit of machismo in traditional family life and culture in the greater community.

As I was trying to organize my thoughts on this topic at this ungodly time of 4.16 a.m., trying to beat my Thursday deadline, I came to view at the same time an interesting TED talk by the psychologist Guy Winch on the importance of emotional hygiene in our lives. It was emailed to us by a former classmate and close friend, Nishi Mukerji. I now see the relationship between what this Guy Winch was saying on Youtube and my initial thoughts about women before dawn breaks on this Thursday morning.

Let’s start by summarizing what Mr. Winch says in this TED talk. He says that we put more importance to physical hygiene than emotional hygiene, that while we have first aid for bodily pain, we do not have first aid for emotional pain. We are often left on our own to cope with loneliness, rejection, failure, and  low self-esteem, the common emotional injuries we suffer from day to day – sometimes with disastrous results!

Take loneliness, for instance. Mr. Winch says studies show that if left unchecked, loneliness can increase the likelihood of early death by 14 %,. It can lead to high blood pressure, high cholesterol level, and defective immune system. It is as harmful as smoking, but unlike the latter, there was no warning that says it can cause untimely death.

Loneliness is a feeling of emotional and psychological disconnect from the rest of the world. But for this emotional pain, there is no clear prescription available at home or at the work place. Not like if you have toothache or other cases of bodily pain. When you are lonely, you may not know how to deal with it because it does not rate high as an ailment that family members suffer from, not like when you have aching joints or a sore finger.

Those who want to know more about emotional hygiene can view -http://www.ted.com/talks/guy_winch_the_case_for_emotional_hygiene 

As I viewed the video, I realized that like countless others, I have survived all these emotional anguish, what he calls as “emotional bleeding,” not actually on a self-help basis, but with the assistance of family and friends, most of them women. It is as though women are more inclined to provide this kind of emotional healing and better mindful of emotional hygiene than most of my male friends who have been close to me through the years. On these final days of Women’s Month, I would like to pay tribute to some of the women who have made my life more bearable on account of their seemingly instinctive knowledge about emotional healing or emotional hygiene.

My maternal Grandmother, probably like most Grandmothers, had an instinct to detect this inner loneliness and would do everything to help me overcome it. Growing up as the only boy in a family of women gave ample opportunities to be lonely – and with Lola at your side, so many chances to get out it and be happy.

Inay Tanda took the task of taking care of me and my sister while Mother slaved herself in the dessicated factory as a worker, slicing off the brown skin of the coconut after the male workers had taken the shell parts off. Sometimes my Grandmother would take me to the factory to watch the shellers and the parers work in long rows oblivious to the factory noise and the people milling about to watch them in this daily ritual. The laborers would take turns in daytime and night shifts.

At home, I would lay awake thinking of how Mother would have her feet wet with coconut water as she removed it by puncturing the shelled coconut fruit. I worried that she might get sick for lack of sleep and having her feet always soaking wet with coconut water. Inay Tanda would always remind us this is a sacrifice Mother had to make to save money so we could go to school someday.  It was my first exposure to the benefit, as well as the impersonal nature of the capitalist system.

I remember my Grandmother would take me to the nearby river to watch her wash our clothes or to the copra drying kiln owned by the caretaker of the coconut plantation in our barrio. She would occasionally be employed there to remove coconut meat from the shell and get them dried in the kiln. In other times, she would take care of the supervisor’s children but without salary.

Somehow Inay Tanda probably sensed my frequent bouts of loneliness while being mostly alone at home.  She probably saw me staring blankly at nothing on the sawali walls in those days when I was five years old waiting to be old enough to get enrolled in the local elementary school.  Inay Tanda gifted me from our meager family resources three goats that I had to take care of and this helped me survive those lonely days by the window thinking of nothing in particular while anticipating what I imagined to be exciting days at school.

Raising goats was the most exciting activity that I got involved in during those days. I had to learn where to bring them for grazing and this gave me an excuse to get outside the confines of our nipa hut and limited front yard. I was able to explore the big coconut plantations in the barangay and met personally some tenants who worked on the land and took care of the coconut trees. They were the ones who showed me where the ipil-ipil trees grew where I could get leaves that goats are particularly fond of eating although they seemed to be eating anything  green on sight. Best of all, I was made to see the rest of the river that runs through our village and was able to explore the creeks that snaked their ways to it during rainy days.

From the simple activity of putting the three goats to pasture, I learned a lot about the neighborhood, the river and creeks a few kilometers from our place, the rest of the neighbors who tilled the land and make copra and prepare a feast each time landowners and their families from Manila would come to bring relatives and friends to show off their vast landholdings tilled by our neighbors for what I imagined later as so many centuries after the passion and death of Jesus Christ.

I have no way of knowing if my Inay Tanda, who reached Grade IV by her account, knew at that time that giving me three goats to take care of when I was five years old was the best way to cure me of loneliness that afflicted me during those childhood years spent surrounded by vast coconut plantations which defined the local economy and our lives.

Psychologist Guy Winch talked about the inability to rise up from failure as caused not necessarily by lack of competence, but by a defeatist attitude that became predominant after the initial bad experience of failing in an activity. It is more of a mental predisposition reinforced by a negative view of oneself that persists from day to day until such time that a positive reorientation of one’s belief system has become possible with some encouragement from family members and friends.

He acknowledges that changing such mind set as being predisposed to believe about one’s inability to succeed is a major stumbling block to improve performance. In the family, my Mother who had the strongest character among the three of them, always carried the banner of persistence and hard work. I lived through some darkest moments from adolescence to adulthood, and it was always my Mother who would come with timely interventions, in terms of either calculated, intriguing silence or well-articulated and sensitive advice to get me back on track again.

Among those reversals that only my Mother could have the nerve of steel to put me in shape again to do battle with the demons of defeat are as follows: the inability to get a bachelor’s degree after “overstaying”  in college on account of my involvement with the protest movement of the Sixties; the obvious tendency to forget priority goals in the heat of a passionate commitment to a cause which seemed to be vaguer in direction by the minute; the stubbornness to fall in love with the thrills and excitement of the hunt rather than specifying the desired outcome of all the sacrifices being made in the struggle to be free. It was my Mother who communicated quite clearly with her stoic silence and clear statement of purpose at each critical juncture of my punctuated journey towards maturity at a rather late stage of the futile struggle to emancipate the oppressed.

For her part, my Sister who was a teacher, became reason personified who would bring in logic to temper my enthusiasm and passion when the costs were getting bigger on the part of the family. She could not study in college right after graduating from high school because she had to wait for my graduation from college which never materialized. Her rational approach to life was a foil to my romantic predilection and on hindsight, I believe this contributed immensely to helping the family be on course for its goals when leadership was not forthcoming from my side due to my getting distracted that I often got off-track somewhere along the way.

In a previous blog years ago, I already commented and paid tribute to all the women who became part of my life at specific stages of my journey. I will not repeat this tribute due to my fear that it will bore the readers. Enough for me to say that I owe each of these noble women profound gratitude in helping me at each step of this journey I have chosen to take. More importantly, they have helped me survive the hypocrisies and betrayals of those who chose to stand on the opposite side of those who remain persecuted by bad governance and an unjust system reinforced by the arrogance and indifference of those who consider themselves as the political and economic elites in our midst.

Women of the world, on this your month of tribute and blessings, much thanks for your love and devotion to the cause of helping create a better world during this our life and times - despite obvious obstacles and constraints.#genderNMP

NMP/26 March 2015/11.59 p.m. 

A CHALLENGE TO THE NGOs IN BOHOL

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Over the last four to five decades, the problems regarding the relationship between development and governance have revolved around this central issue: how to strengthen capacities  of local governments and communities to jointly plan, implement, manage and maintain projects for the benefit of the whole community but with focus on those who are in the peripheries, namely, the landless farmers, subsistence fisher-folks, informal settlers in urbanized areas, the unemployed, youth and women who need help in articulating their needs, children in “difficult circumstances,” such as those caught in the crossfire between officers of the law and the lawless, or children and adults trapped in poverty and despair in all kinds of poverty landscapes.

As far as government planning and documentation is concerned, NGOs have morphed into Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), which now include faith-based organizations, academic institutions, POs or People’s Organizations, Cooperatives and other entities duly recognized by the Government as non-governmental. I will retain the acronym NGOs in this column to refer to those entities which can be differentiated from other CSOs by relative independence from religious and political affiliations either covert or overt.

In Bohol, except for those who may have lived incommunicado either by destiny or choice in remote, isolated caves for decades, people know that most NGOs have become highly-motivated partners of the Government in the implementation of projects, mostly donor-assisted. Not necessarily out of free choice. They have been sand-bagged to this role due to severe lack of funds needed for their own survival.

This is quite understandable since everyone would like NGOs to survive. Their role is quite important to address this crucial issue of forging strong links between local communities and the local governments or any instrumentality, agency, office at national and subnational level with a presence at city/municipal levels down to the barangays and puroks or sub-barangays. Some international donors are more inclined to approve projects which feature government-NGO partnership.

While this cozy arrangement is beneficial to both the Government and the NGOs, something must have died along the way, namely, in the journey sworn in by the latter to take advantage of opportunities left behind by Government efforts. NGOs in recent months seem to have become blind and deaf to such opportunities.

Our NGO, the Bohol Local Development Foundation (BLDF), monitored news and editorial materials published from 20 April 2014 to 19 March 2015 in three newspapers:  Bohol Tribune, Bohol Chronicle and Bohol News Today. The number of articles published totaled 117 for 44 weeks or an average of 2 articles a week. Total length reached 2,118.4 column inches or an average of 48 column inches a week. This is considered significant because the papers surveyed consisted of three weeklies and one daily.

NGOs in Bohol have not yet found their collective voice to sound the alarm on the proliferation of illegal drugs in the province and the resulting harm done on the lives of  hundreds of families both  in rapidly-urbanizing municipalities and in relatively remote areas;  the rise in drug-related crimes and the slow pace of prosecuting arrested drug personalities; the profound damage done on our sense of community and our public image by pictures shown in local papers about bloodied bodies of both sexes  riddled by bullets in busy intersections, sometimes in broad daylight.

Perhaps these images of alleged drug pushers shot dead in public places may have caused fear among the people, if not the drug pushers or their syndicates, among ordinary men and women  and the NGO community as well. Like the people themselves, NGO officers and members may be afraid of being suspected by either side, the police and the alleged drug pushers, to be a threat to their respective safety and security. Hence, like other sectors, they resort to silence and seemingly benign indifference as a response to the revolting drug scene.

Like others in the civil society sector, NGOs are not expected to go after drug dealers and pushers and arrest them. That is for the Government and the police to do. The most pressing issue is how to help the hundreds of drug abuse victims, mostly  young and coming from the poor, who need to go through a systematic healing process, and who cannot be expected to shoulder the expenses for counselling and medical services required.

What these drug abusers are going through is more than a behavioral deviation issue. Their brain has been damaged by repeated drug abuse. They need to be identified and given adequate psycho-social services and treatment over a period of time. Parental admonitions and insults hurled against them will not do the trick. Their affliction is more than a behavioral problem.

For milder cases, those showing early symptoms of the brain disease, counselling and work therapy will have to be administered. This pre-treatment and treatment phases will require support from all sectors and institutions. Fortunately for us in Bohol, the prestigious Davao New Day Recovery Center (NDRC)  in Davao City, the owner and top psychologists and psychiatrists traced their origin to Bohol and are willing to help us build both the drug rehabilitation center and the mental health facility here in the province.

Bohol Local Development Foundation, Inc.(BLDF) has offered the use of 1.2 ha.  in Mangool, Baclayon for setting up the livelihood component of the project to generate income and ensure that young people from poor families will be treated at the facility. Also, for this purpose, a fund campaign will be launched in April for a trust fund.

In addition, BLDF will make available the use of 9,000 sq. m. property as site for the proposed structures that will be built and run by NDRC Davao with private sector investments to ensure the commercial viability of the facility.

NDRC Davao has committed to develop the capability of NGOs and academic institutions in Bohol to undertake the pre-treatment methodology and skills prior to referral and treatment. Equally important, through Dr. Miriam Cue, who is originally from Bohol and a noted practitioner-examiner, with international network of experts, specialists from Colombo plan in Sri Lanka will be made available to train local facilitators and volunteers for tasks during the initial phase of the project. It is envisioned that through the series of training, local Drop-In Centers can be identified and made operational initially with the support and assistance of the Diocese of Tagbilaran City.

Fr. Francisco Estepa, president of Holy Name University, committed support to the project through mobilization of volunteers from Psychology and Social Sciences departments to assist throughout all the phases of the project. Noted cultural guru, Lutgardo Labad and his Kasing Sining group will present plays and other cultural shows to the various barangays to provide vehicle for relevant messages related to drug abuse and will engage the community in a lively interaction towards a better understanding of all forms of addiction.

The Provincial Government is expected to be part of a consultative and referral body for the coordination required with local government units and government agencies for a comprehensive program to be implemented in the proposed New Day Recovery Center Bohol.

Meanwhile, Fr. Val Pinlac has encouraged us to prepare a proposal for the initial training and social preparation activities needed to put in place the various teams needed to put in place an organization for advocacy and fund raising and to ensure that there will be Drop In centers to enable families to access information and services for drug abuse and mental health problems among families relatively more disadvantaged than others.

The foregoing initiatives present NGOs in Bohol opportunities to be part of the rehabilitation component of the war against drug abuse in Bohol and, in the process, motivate them to play a bigger role in this challenging task to help rehabilitate victims of drug abuse among the poor. It is hoped that in playing this role to address a significant social problem in Bohol, the NGOs will rediscover their strength which “lies in their ability to act as bridges, facilitators, brokers and translators, linking together institutions, interventions, capacities and levels of action that are required to lever broader structural changes from discrete or small-scale actions.” #blogsBLDF

NMP/19 March 2015/4.44 p.m. 

MAGICAL MOMENTS IN BATUAN COLLEGES

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Last Sunday, 08 March, I was guest speaker at the 19^th Commencement Exercises of Batuan Colleges described in the graduation souvenir program as a “family-supported educational institution.” The Board of Trustees is composed mostly of members from the Digamon Family. Of the trustees, women constitute 42%, but the Administration has 63% women.

This being International Women’s Day, I also counted the graduates based on the list appearing in the souvenir program and noted that out of 77 who completed bachelor degrees in elementary and secondary education, courses in Hotel and Restaurant Service Technology, the TESDA-supervised courses (Food and Beverage, Housekeeping), and Grade VI,  only 22 or 28.5% were boys.

Of the 31 faculty and other staff, only 6 or 19% are men. Hence, it was not surprising, that there was no mention at all of the significance of Women’s Day being celebrated globally during the commencement exercises in which I had to speak on the theme, “The Academe: The of Journey to Progress.” It was clear that women have the numerical edge in the faculty, administration and student body of Batuan Colleges.

In the Foreword to the graduation program, it was noted that Batuan Colleges was founded in 1994 by Dr. Consolacion Digamon-Vinluan “to equip young men & women with the concepts, values and skills that they need to lead successful lives and render worthwhile services to God and Country.” Since its founding, the student population has grown from four to more than 400 and from being a one-room school to having three two-storey buildings.

Among the other achievements cited are as follows: about 90% of the graduates passed the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET) and 100% in the Competency Assessment conducted by TESDA; several students were among the Ten Outstanding Students of Bohol in school years 2005-2006 and 2006-2007; some students have found employment in Bangkok, Thailand; the institution is the only one in the province awarded by the TESDA-ADB Job-Directed Scholarship Program in several competencies (Baking & Commercial Cooking, Food & Beverage, Housekeeping, Computer Operations & Servicing, Audio-Video Servicing and Cell Phone Repair).

In June, 2010, it signed an agreement with  Urdaneta City University in Pangasinan making Batuan Colleges an extension of the University’s Graduate Programs, and also for degrees in Accountancy, Information Technology and Tourism. The first batch, all women (Josefina Stanford, Cora Uy, Susana Doris and Gina Bantol) graduated in April 2012. In recent years, it has attracted students not only from Batuan, but also from Tagbilaran City, Talibon, Mabini, Maribojoc, Panglao, Loon, 

Sevilla, Lila, Inabanga and Pilar. This could be due not only to its outstanding academic performance, but also to the fact that it makes deliberate efforts to make its fees lower than those charged by other schools as commitment to its objective to broaden access to education by children and young people coming from the peripheries, as Pope Francis would refer to what planners call the disadvantaged and marginalized sectors of the population.

As though to validate the institution’s adherence to this objective, the elementary education degree graduate who gave a speech on behalf of her class, Rosemarie Maslog Luzano, recounted her struggle and that of her parents to enable her to obtain a degree. She talked of how she worked in odd jobs to be able to go to school. She cried as she talked and most of those in the audience did too, an indication that many of those who graduated that day could relate to her story.

Dr. Cholie Vinluan, the BNI President, requested me to also join her and other school officials in the ceremony to hand out diplomas and certificates to graduates in the company of their parents. Most of the parents are simple folks, who came in simple but presentable attire, and when I shook their hands, I could feel those hands were those from people who use them in their daily toil. I recall my Mother and Grandmother having the same rough palms, familiar tools of those who depend on manual labor so their families can survive from day to day. These are the same hands that send millions of children to school as part of their family’s hope for a better life.

It dawned on me while shaking their hands this is the value of having an institution as Batuan Colleges in their midst, a means and symbol for the poor to achieve social mobility for their children so that families can expand their options for the future. When it was my turn to speak, it took me quite a while to clear my throat and prevent the mist in my eyes to turn into tears. Truly I was in the midst of my own people, those who have been betrayed so many times by their leaders, whether from the political right or left, or those incurably corrupt, and their only hope is to believe in what a diploma or certificate can possibly give their children in terms of a better future.

In tribute to the vital role of Batuan Colleges, I said: “By producing teachers committed to educating young people, your Alma Mater is helping build the nation in the hearts and minds of those who will inherit it for themselves and their children. By imparting employable skills among the young people, most of them from marginalized and disadvantaged communities and households, your Alma Mater is helping ensure that young people will be part of the solutions to social problems rather than be the problems themselves.”

Looking at them, these parents and their children, their faces aglow in this unspoken hope for the future, I found the conviction to read from my prepared speech these words from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats: “Educations is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

Truly I had magical moments in Batuan Colleges just being part of its 19^th Commencement Exercises. I thought I would come to inspire the new graduates and their parents. Instead I came away inspired by seeing vast possibilities for what a committed academic institution such as Batuan Colleges could do to be a force for the common good not only to impart knowledge and skills but, more importantly, to make families  find the hope and passion to lead fulfilled and meaningful lives despite adversities.

Let us have more such academic institutions serving remote communities in Bohol. ###

NMP/12 March 2015/2.07 a.m. 

PASSION FOR ORGANIC FOOD PRODUCTION

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

I remember those days in the 1990s to early 2000s when Bohol province seemed to convulse with one great passion to do organic stuff. Organic agriculture was quite a passion for everyone in Government and civil society. In those early days, we were all proud to announce, at the drop of the slightest hint, to all who cared to listen, that the province was quite advance in the pursuit of the healthy and environment-friendly lifestyle.

In so many seminars and  meetings mostly paid for by donors, we extolled the virtues of unpolished rice whether pink, red or black. A brand of organic rice named after the project which promoted it became an instant hit. Doing composting on the backyard became a fad. We came to know about a type of worm good at making soil called African night crawler, quite a sexy name for such lowly creature. Several local governments spent their funds setting up composting plants and having organic farms for all the constituents to see.

Our NGO implemented successively two pilot projects on organic food production at the start of the previous decade funded by AusAID and CIDA. While the technologies were basically the same, AusAID assistance was more in building capabilities of people’s organizations to carry out organic farming, while that of CIDA promoted more local government support to chemical-free agriculture.  I remember vividly those days marked by memorizing acronyms such as OHN, FFJ, FAH, IMOs to refer to concoctions to promote farming the organic way

Yes, organic food production was the rage of the hour. You felt guilty eating junk food. As in other advocacies, such as gender equality, many thought they were warriors out to save the world under the banner of organic agriculture. It was a high moment in governance with policies, plans and programs, coordination mechanisms and grassroots implementation, although on a pilot basis, realigned almost as perfectly as cogs in a wheel.

The province had something which other provinces did not have – the Bohol Initiators for Sustainable Agriculture and Development (BISAD) composed of both NGOs and government agencies joined together in a cause to advance organic food production. Organic food production became more of a movement, carried across sectors, and enjoying both mass and institutional support just like the Green Revolution or backyard food production in the 1970s,

We have not heard anything from BISAD for almost two to three years now.  Could it be that organic food production is now suffering what the Green Revolution experienced decades ago, simply losing steam when the novelty wears off, its champions and advocates and foot soldiers or its volunteers overwhelmed with unforeseen constraints? Or is it simply a case of being drowned out by competing advocacies or new interests on the part of those promoting it?

For the last two weeks, we have embarked on this journey to find out the answer. We started here at home, in barangay Laya, where we operate a retreat house and training center called Balay Kahayag. It used to be a beehive where organic food advocates gather to share experiences and learn lessons to better guide their advocacy.

My wife, Jojie, used to have pigs raised in our place according to guidelines provided by the video, Babuyang Walang Amoy, and managed to sell a total of 21 pigs after eight months to friends and colleagues in BISAD. She had the pigs slaughtered and cut into one-kilo packs. In less than two days, everything was sold out, attesting to the popularity of organic pork. I recall her saying that even those who renounced the eating of pork for health reasons were enticed to taste pork again because of the lesser fatty portions and the absence of obnoxious smell.

Why did she give up what could be a profitable venture? The two workers who were taking care of the pigs found it quite tedious going around the barangay to look for plant parts and other ingredients for the feeds. If organic pig-raising will be promoted as family-based enterprise, there is a need for one or two members to just focus on preparing the feeds and the rest of the activities to some other family members. As in other business ventures, specialization is called for as we scale up the number of pigs to be raised the organic way.

Our friend, Joel Uichico, who initiated the Bikes for Education project here in Baclayon, also managed to set up a demonstration farm adjacent to our place. Many young volunteers came to spend hours on the farm, some of them from New Zealand, Germany, Australia and even from People’s Republic of China. Vegetables were somehow coaxed to grow from rocky soil and either given free or sold to some customers in the neighborhood. After two years of busy activity associated with production and marketing of vegetables, the farm reverted to being a grassy adventure for cows.

I can only guess that Joel was not able to hire paid workers when the foreign volunteers left, which is a dilemma in projects which could not generate seed capital for the initial years of the project.

In our trip to Carmen several days ago, I came to visit the office of the Carmen Samahang Nayon Multi-Purpose Center (CSNMPC), a key partner of our NGO in earlier days in the promotion of organic rice production and marketing. Joy Ramirez, it manager, was clearly the most visible CSO partner also of Government in those days. Under her watch, the cooperative grew through the years to establish a network reaching out to every nook and cranny of the organic rice value chain. The cooperative was given full support by donors such as AusAID, CIDA, the Department of Agriculture and the Provincial Government.

I found out in time for the visit that Joy was no longer with the CSNMPC and had moved to the cacao production project of Kennemer company, also in Carmen. Someone from the Board took her place as manager. Somebody in the office hinted that she had differences with the Board regarding how to manage the rice mill finally delivered to the coop three years after it was promised. The rice mill that was procured and delivered by the Department of Agriculture was too big for the requirements of the coop. It has been too expensive to operate; hence, the Board decided on a strategy to use the rice mill once a week for inorganic rice, have a day for flushing out impurities, and the rest of the week for milling organic rice. Like most of us in the organic food advocacy, Joy was taught rice mills should be exclusively for organic rice; otherwise, we run the risk of contaminating the purity of organic produce.

There was no time for me to ask Joy questions regarding the issue and had to rely on what was given to me as information by someone who works at the CSNMPC office.  It’s a technical issue beyond our expertise to comment on or offer a sound opinion. I am only citing it here to indicate the need for a technical body authoritative enough to settle differences of opinion regarding practices related to organic agriculture.

At the same office, I met two nuns, Sister Ma. Teresa Bautista from the Colegio de la Medalla Milagrosa in Jagna and Sister Emilia Buenaseda of the Blessed Trinity College in Talibon. They said they travelled far from their respective congregation to look for organic rice. We engaged them in small talk while they waited for their order to arrive. They said they would like to promote the use of organic rice and other produce in their schools because they believed it was good for health and also for the environment.

Let me just mention here that the two good sisters were not able to get the bulk of their order for organic rice because none of the staff had the key to the warehouse. It turned out the driver had gone to Tagbilaran and brought the key with him, something which could not possibly happen under Joy’s watch.

I suggested to Marissa Tuazon, provincial coordinator of the farmers’ organization PAKISAMA which is helping CSNMPC improve further its marketing operations, that perhaps a close look at existing systems and processes needs to be undertaken to avoid incidents such as missing sales targets for the day because the warehouse key has no duplicate or that staff are not mindful of where to place keys when they leave office premises.

Ms. Tuazon was kind enough to accompany us to the farm of Aquileo “Undoy” Columnas in response to our request that we see examples of organic farm in this part of the province. His rice farm was impressive. The lush growth of the rice plants presented a memorable scene made possible by an abundant supply of water from a nearby river. Ms. Tuazon told us that fresh leaves from the madre de cacao trees planted along a boundary of the farm are gathered and applied on the rice farm as fertilizer in addition probably to some materials from the compost pits.

We were told the farm serves also as showcase for integrated organic farming, but the other components need sorting out: the pigs being raised are given commercial feeds; in another piggery on the site, rice hulls were used as prescribed for flooring materials to avoid the foul smell and to discourage use of water, but commercial feeds were also used.

Undoy, who also owns the popular Tanie’s Chicken House in the poblacion, says he does not raise native chickens anymore. He encourages families to raise them so he can buy from them for the requirement of his restaurant.

In a sense, his farm demonstrates the difficulty of integrating various components in a farm lot. It requires a relatively more sophisticated type of management to ensure prompt delivery of inputs which, in turn, may require more resources in terms of money, time and efforts on the part of the farmer constrained usually by lack of access to capital or credit facility.

Yesterday, instead of having the regular meeting of the executive committee of our NGO, I decided instead to bring our newly-formed 5-member livelihood unit to the increasingly popular Maribojoc Organic Farm. Since I have visited this facility at its inception four years ago and several times thereafter always with guests from projects I have been involved in, I opted this time to be with the manager, Jun Jabonillo, and her guest, Ms. Merly Christina Barlaan, president of the Women’s Federation for World Peace.

Jun kindly allowed me to talk to her first. She told me that her family, specifically two brothers and herself, tried organic farming two years ago on two hectares of their land in Montesunting, Carmen. Ms. Barlaan says after a year of operations the family could not sustain the operations and blamed this on price fluctuations and other factors, such as lack of support from the government; lack of vermicast or organic fertilizer; and difficulty to transport goods from the farm to the market.

She said that organic farming could succeed only as a family-based enterprise. It will take a lot of resources to scale it up as major commercial undertaking, in which case the big corporate players will succeed on account of their built-in efficiency due to its bigger size and enormous funding resources that will give them competitive advantage. For family enterprises to succeed on a relatively bigger scale, she says they should be able to work together either as an association or cooperative.

On the success of the Maribojoc Organic Farm, Ms. Barlaan attributed this to the key role played by Mayor Evasco and the Municipal Government. The Mayor put in Php 2 million from cash awards from DILG for two successive years as winners in the Good Housekeeping category. Jun Jabonillo agreed with this observation and added that the LGU provides funding for the salaries of the 20 staff who run and maintain the farm. Asked on how the farm could be maintained after the final term of the Mayor expires next year, he says they are looking at options, such as making the whole farm wholly a private sector undertaking if the next administration will withdraw funding support to the organic farm.

The organic farm draws visitors from LGUs outside Bohol but the entrance fee of Php 30 per person will not be enough to generate income to ensure financial sustainability of farm operations. The task is to scale up production to meet the high demand created by the vigorous advocacy campaigns and demonstration projects during the past two decades on the merit of organic agriculture as compared to chemical-based farming.

In Bohol, as our brief field survey shows, the passion for organic agriculture has not waned entirely, but it requires leadership at all fronts to address current problems and mobilize with new vigor policymakers and planners as well as the local communities in making it more than a showcase undertaking or a pilot project. We need to address the real problems encountered by local stakeholders rather than be doing things only to please donors who may be trapped by their own conceptual framework and agenda rather than respond concretely to real-life problems encountered by organic food producers.

We can start with having a thorough and objective assessment of what has happened with initial efforts to meet the high demand for organic products – the obvious result of previous advocacy and marketing campaigns. Let us talk about real problems encountered by organic food producers and come up with a matrix of effective interventions at each level (policy; planning and programming; coordination with relevant sectors; and grassroots implementation). Indeed it is time to take this first step in this new phase of turning passion into sustained commitment for better health, a safer environment and more economically resilient families and communities.

Let this new journey begin. ###

NMP/04 March 2015/10.33 p.m.