With the pandemic of the coronavirus, we Filipinos have forgotten corona means crown, such as being worn by each Miss Universe. Beauty & Brains: Gloria Diaz, Miss Universe 1969 and Catriona Gray, Miss Universe 2018 (image from Cosmopolitan[1]). Brains & Beauty: Husband & Wife (image from amazon.com[2])
“Corona” also means “circle of light” and thereby signifies “enlightenment.” Explained below, The Brains & Beauty Program wants to turn out enlightened farmers and enlightened coops in countryside settings via a pilot program hopefully sponsored by the Department of Agriculture, DA, now headed by Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie.
The thing is that millions of farmers are not getting their beautiful shares of the values they add to their farm produce, being good farmers but bad managers. They are not using their brains when it comes to the business of farming.
In fact, farmers do not consider farming a business –
simply a way of life!
simply a way of life!
Hence this proposal of mine with the program name:
PH Brains & Beauty, Model Farmers Program
The short name: B&B Program.
For each program participant, the B&B farmers will be pairs, both the Husband (Brains) and Wife (Beauty) who will be engaged for each hectare of agricultural land cultivated.
Initially, the goal is to develop a successful pilot model coop in each of 3 DA regions in Luzon: Region 1 (Ilocos), Region 3 (Central Luzon), and Region 4A (Calabarzon). In each model B&B coop, the following program features will apply:
Training. The 3 model coops each with 3 coop directors and 5 farmer pairs involved will attend a one-time common training of 1 week at PhilRice in Nueva Ecija. This will be led by Program Manager Frank A Hilario.
Loan assistance. The first day of training will be spent considering & calculating farming expenses from production to harvesting and marketing the farm produce. The amount will then be guaranteed by each coop to be available to the model farmer pair.
Cultivator camp. This is the service center for each coop’s hand tractors, rotavators, seeders, transplanters, combine harvesters, dryers, haulers etc.
Coop warehouse. For storing produce awaiting buyers.
Some B&B protocols:
Crops: Rice, corn, sweet sorghum, and pinakbet vegetables: ampalaya, bean, chili, eggplant, tomato, okra.
Cultivation: Use of a rotavator big or small to cut weeds and soil to pieces and mix them into an organic mulch all over the field. This is called trash mulching. The mulch is your source of natural foods for your crops.
Rice culture: The method called System of Rice Intensification will be used.
Sweet sorghum will be grown instead of sugarcane. Sorghum is twice sweeter than sugarcane! ICRISAT variety & technology will be used.
Sweet corn will be raised for consumers around town as well as in distant places.
All of the above will actually go into the B&B Program to bring to life, via techno demos, sustainable agriculture: technically feasible, economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially acceptable.
This will be the first Brains & Beauty Program in the whole world of Agriculture!@517
[1] https://www.cosmo.ph/style/trend-alert/miss-universe-crowns-a00176-20170129
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Loving-Married-Cartoon-Sticker-Husband/dp/B07DYGKZH1
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