Inclusive Coco Billions. To ACPC 60, UPLB-ICRISAT 30 & R Davide 10 B

MANILA: The Coco Levy Funds can make you coco loco if you don't watch out! They are reported to be a gargantuan sum of PhP 100-150 billion that belongs to the coconut farmers who were unjustly taxed in the time of President Ferdinand Marcos (Wikipedia). I'll take the higher sum. Do you have an idea how much money that is? To raise PhP 150 billion, if you were earning PhP 25,000 a month, it will take 12 months for 500,000 of you to earn that total.

Those billions belong to whom they came from and should be spent wisely for their sake. If the government suddenly distributed the funds equally to 3 million coco farmers, that big sum will amount to little: only PhP 50,000 per head. We have to use our head and think intelligently about how to spend such a bank-full of money before we ask the government to release it.

No wonder, I understand that groups like the National Academy of Science & Technology (NAST) have been discussing why and how the coconut industry can diversify and provide jobs, leading to sustainable development, I hope.

Now then, the NAST has come up with what it calls "A Roadmap for Inclusive Growth." In a paper presented during the 35th Annual Scientific Meeting of the NAST, 10 July 2013 at the Manila Hotel, NAST Academician & Ateneo Chemistry Professor Fabian M Dayrit said, "The focus of the NAST effort was to show how the Philippines can harness science and technology to revive the manufacturing sector." (I got my pdf copy via email.) Dayrit said the ideas in his paper had been culled from those of Jose Romero Jr (former Chair of the Philippine Coconut Authority), Carlos Carpio (Deputy Administrator of the Philippine Coconut Authority), Dean Lao Jr (Managing Director of Chemrez Technologies), and Evelina Patiño (COO of United Coconut Chemicals). An impressive list.

Thinking of the coco billions and solutions to poverty, aside from population control, the word in every expert's lips these days is "inclusive growth" involving the coconut industry. The problem with the ideas of the above distinguished gentlemen and lady separately or combined is that they are all relying on the Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016 developed by NEDA, which has a brave but limited vision of the future, and not that it only plans up to 2016.

If my sight is right, it's impaired vision. I actually wrote about it almost 11 months ago when that plan came out in the papers (see my essay "Inclusive NEDA," 12 September 2012, Manila Times, manilatimes.net). If I may say so myself, that was a rather brilliant essay, even lyrical. What did I say? NEDA was thinking local, not global. I said NEDA was inclusive local, not inclusive global.

The NEDA Plan calls for "inclusive growth" that it defines as follows:

Inclusive growth means, first of all, growth that is rapid enough to matter, given the country’s large population, geographical differences, and social complexity. It is sustained growth that creates jobs, draws the majority into the economic and social mainstream, and continuously reduces mass poverty.

Dayrit says the NEDA definition of inclusive growth is this: "growth that is sustained, that massively creates jobs, and reduces poverty."

No Sirs, "Job Creation" is a limited strategy. In my 2010 essay, "Population's a lot of bull. Education's a lot of bull sheets" (11 October 2010, Frank A Hilario, blogspot.com), I said, "We need to produce more people who are enterprising; we need a population explosion of entrepreneurs!" If you insist on job creation, to solve unemployment, you must create 1 million jobs every year, and that's simply impossible if you have to create infrastructure first.

And no Sirs, in both long and short definitions, the NEDA concept of inclusive growth is not inclusive enough. It does not include the poor farmers as actors participating in a drama of their own deliverance.

NEDA and the NAST and all the others thinking similarly must learn from abroad what makes inclusive truly inclusive; they must learn from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, which is led by a Filipino, Director General William Dar. A sister agency of IRRI, which is based in the Philippines, ICRISAT, which is based in India, is the leader of a global partnership that has adopted as its strategy what they call Inclusive Market-Oriented Development (IMOD). Under IMOD, the farmers are connected directly to the market and are supported along the whole value chain, so that the poor farmers can rise from poverty and the rich merchants can go look for rich business elsewhere.

I should know whereof I speak. I have been writing on ICRISAT and ICRISAT partnerships in the last 7 years; I have a dedicated blog, iCRiSAT Watch (blogspot.com), which contains more than 200 essays of at least 1,000 words each (this one is 1,756 words). (To start, you can see my "The Yankee Dawdle. On Discovery Sorghum, The Great Climate Crop," 04 February 2007, and "The Turning Point. Know that silent water runs deep," 04 October 2007, iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com. For more economics on the IMOD, read William Dar's speech accepting the Dr MS Swaminathan Award for Leadership in Agriculture for 2013, "Enhancing Smallholder Farmer Participation in Markets" The IMOD Way," icrisat.org. On the Award, I have written about it myself; see my "TAAS or SALA? William Dar is Global Science Leader of the Year 2013," 28 June 2013, iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com.)
What I can tell you about the IMOD is that it is truly participative and therefore truly inclusive. As I see it, there are 7 participating IMOD groups working as a global team applying new or improved science in agriculture for local development; I call them The 7 Ps of IMOD:

(1) Packager - This comprises ICRISAT & other contributors of "Science with a human face."
(2) Public - This comprises national, regional and local government units providing policies as well as funds.
(3) Private - This comprises business interests.
(4) People - This comprises civil society, NGOs, civic & people organizations, Church groups.
(5) Patrons - This comprises individuals & institutions that donate talents & funds in support of projects.
(6) Peasants - This comprises the poor farmers who work in villages to help themselves.
(7) Proselytizers - This is the mass media who disseminate information and spread insights & inspiration.

Not all the 7 may be in the same project at the same time, but they're all there nevertheless. What the coco farmers need is, starting with new or improved science, such inclusive IMOD partnership.
Our NAST lecturer Fabian says Jose Romero Jr, former Chair of the Philippine Coconut Authority, has been proposing that the coco farmers, among other things, "diversify horizontally by effective intercropping" using the so-called "Coconut-Based Farming System (CBFS)." I know about the CBFS because I worked in the mid-to-late 1980s with the Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute of UP Los Baños when my friend Pids Rosario was Director and Nelson Natural was Team Leader of the CBFS group. What I know is that the beauty of the concept of CBFS is not matched by the reality of the economics of it - the poor farmers remain poor. It's the (marketing) system, stupid!

What the coco and all farmers need is a system where the middleman is eliminated, and that's what the IMOD is all about. Not that we love the middleman less, but that we love the farmers more.

What NEDA's Inclusive Growth actually calls for is Supply-Pushed Development, not Demand-Driven. What NEDA and the NAST are calling for is the ancient Top-to-Bottom Approach. The experts know what to do, so won't the poor farmers simply sit down and listen to the words of wisdom? You heard it once, you heard it a thousand times. If we insist on NEDA's Inclusive Plan, we will not be teaching the farmers reliance on themselves but, instead, continuing reliance on government. So why are we surprised about farmers' mendicant mentality?

If you will listen to me, instead, the coco billions will be counted out and distributed as follows:
(a) PhP 60 billion goes to the Agricultural Credit Policy Council.

Attached to the Department of Agriculture, the ACPC is intelligently headed by Jovita Corpuz, Executive Director. Last year, for quite a few months, to produce the ACPC April 2012 Silver Anniversary coffee-table book of 150 pages 8-1/2" x 11" trim size, The Filipino Farmer Is Bankable, I worked with the ACPC and visited, interviewed and shot (photographed) some loan projects of the cooperative banks through which it operates - in Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Benguet, Canlaon City, and Dumaguete City - so I came to know that the ACPC needs billions more for farm credit, and I also learned that the ACPC people are honest and hard-working. Yes Sir, with the ACPC, the poor Filipino farmer is Bankable. How do we create more jobs economically? The PhP 60 billion will create more entrepreneurs, and we will enjoy the multiplier effect of those creating more jobs.

(b) PhP 30 billion goes to a UP Los Baños-ICRISAT Inclusive Program.

Not that I'm an alumnus, but this is simply because we need more new or improved science of agriculture for development. Especially if you're in Mindanao and you're calling for intercropping coconut with other crops such as coffee (Nestlé will gladly buy your produce), and pineapple (Del Monte should buy it all). The amount will go into an inclusive partnership with ICRISAT who will teach UPLB all about partnerships as well as new or improved science applied in agriculture for development.

(c) PhP 10 billion goes to Romulo Davide.

Davide is a Professor Emeritus of UP Los Baños and one of last year's winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Award. He will gladly spend those billions for his nationwide Farmer-Scientist Training Program (FSTP). It was the FSTP and his socially conscious leadership that turned his 5th-class hometown Argao in Cebu to 1st class in only 12 years and won him his Ramon Magsaysay. The FSTP started as corn-based farming. He will concentrate this time on the coco farmers. We need more scientists like Romulo Davide who put academic theory into farmer practice.

And no Sirs, you don't need infrastructure - the infra is already there.

What about the remaining PhP 50 billion? I leave it to NEDA and the NAST to spend on their plan for inclusive growth. They can count me out; I'm not planning to count on it.