New Dar & Inanglupa Challenge. "Knowledge with a human face"

Does Agriculture belong in a Democracy? Of course! Democracy is ecstasy, but you can't eat ecstasy. 

Retiring William Dar is going out as Director General of ICRISAT based in India 4 days from now; New Year's Day is almost here; actually, he is not retiring, as he's coming in as President of the Inanglupa Movement based in the Philippines full-time. "The best is yet to be!"

I always sign copies of my books – 7 so far published by ICRISAT (#8 in press) – that I give away with these words: "The best is yet to come!" It is both an exhortation (to hope for the best of the best in the receiver's life) and an exultation (and a hope for the best of the best yet from the giver). Here is where it's coming from, a variation of Robert Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra that I memorized in high school yet:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life,
For which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: See all, nor be afraid!"

Retiring should not mean you're tired, spent, useless; it should only mean you're re-tiring, changing tires, and driving on a new journey. Browning has written an ode to Old Age and the New Year; in our case, same old Philippines but a new challenge for William Dar, who has had experienced extremely fruitful 15 years as head of ICRISAT and coming back to the homeland. His challenge come New Year's Day 2015: Inanglupa, Motherland, Mother Earth, or Mother Soil.

Now, if you want to advance Philippine agriculture, as it does need much advancing, do you start with government or the farmer or the science of it? If the science of it, do you start with the soil or do you start with the crop?

From the experience of ICRISAT in the last 15 years, the answer is: Start with the crop and the soil. They didn't teach that in agriculture schools in the Philippines until ICRISAT came along with its "Science with a human face." That was the mantra of ICRISAT during William Dar's reign. I suggest that the mantra for Inanglupa be similar, "Science with a natural face." That of Mother Nature. And that of the farmer working with her.

Old Farmer's Practice: The farmer starts with the seeds he thinks he needs, goes on to cultivate his field, assuming that he knows the needs of his soil. He applies chemical fertilizers and pesticides according to general recommendations and by calendar.

New Farmer's Practice: The farmer starts with the soil; he learns what are the nutrients that his crop needs and compares those with what his soil has. Can the Bureau of Soils & Water Management (BSWM) help him in this regard? Not that I can tell, as I have just visited the BSWM website, bswm.da.gov.ph, and read, "We have the technical competency; we have the state of the art equipment and facilities" – but they don't have the data! The state-of-the-art GIS and RS facilities in the bureau was introduced and supported by JICA in 1991 yet, or 23 years ago! I'm disappointed but not surprised. That's the usual bureaucratic report. We could do this but we haven't, for one reason or another.

So, if BSWM is not yet an ally of Inanglupa in the matter of soils, let us turn to the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) for one. Minus-One-Element Technique (MOET) was developed by PhilRice for determining any of several soil deficiencies of the soil: copper, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur and zinc. It's simple; it's visual. With your own unpracticed eyes, if you see the abnormal growth that appears in seedlings in a bag, that indicates the particular element's deficiency in that particular soil. The formula "minus one element" means that in one MOET test pack, all the 6 elements are there but minus copper (-Cu), all but minus nitrogen (-N), all but minus phosphorus (-P), all but minus potassium (-K), all but minus sulfur (-S), all but minus zinc (-Zn); the 7th formulation has all the 6 elements (Complete).

Here are symptoms of specific deficiencies from the IRRI Rice Knowledge Bank (knowledgebank.irri.org): Cu – chlorotic streaks on either side of the midrib. K – older leaves with dark green leaves and yellowish brown margins. N – older leaves or whole plants are yellowish green. P – older leaves are narrow, short, very erect, dirty dark green. S – yellowing or pale green color of the whole plant. Zn – dusty brown spots on upper leaves of stunted plants.

Suppose you cannot distinguish one deficiency symptom from the other? Neither do I. It really doesn't matter – if the sign says -N, whatever the symptom you don't understand, that sign says your soil lacks N, and so on. If you want to be sure, you can call for an expert from PhilRice.

The MOET pack costs only PhP 175; I just bought 2 the other month from PhilRice.

But the MOET is not enough. Our farmers need complete knowledge backup on agriculture, and they are not getting it from the current knowledge banks available. Not the kind I think farmers should be banking with. What modern Philippine agriculture needs now is a modern knowledge bank that understands the farmers, that begins in the farm and ends at home. So, here's a new challenge for William Dar and Inanglupa starting Day 1, or New Year's Day 2015:

Come up with an internet-based information bank in agriculture for Pinoy farmers that high schoolers themselves would love to visit for their parents, and for themselves. The children would have a good reason for being online 24/7, and the parents would take advantage of that. Let's call it for the time being Inanglupa Infobank. It will be truly farmer-friendly, talking his language, not the scientist's. That would be "Knowledge with a human face."

Here is the little story behind that proposal:

For tests of soil deficiencies, I know PhilRice developed MOET; I also know the Pinoy Rice Knowledge Bank (PRKB) is a PhilRice effort; so why is the PRKB ambivalent, to say the least, about MOET? I just came from its website, where PRKB is recommending not just 1 but 3 methods of determining soil deficiencies (pinoyrkb.com):

(1) The leaf color chart (LCC) that is good only for nitrogen deficiency – Is the PRKB hinting, erroneously, to Pinoy farmers that their single worry is nitrogen deficiency?

(2) MOET – Why is not PRKB unequivocal in recommending MOET when in fact it comes from its mother agency PhilRice, and it is the most practical and most inexpensive of the methods mentioned?

(3) The soil test kit that is good only for N, P and K deficiencies – Is the PRKB telling farmers that it's alright if all they're worried about is the NPK of their soils? I know that the STK was developed by UP Los Baños by someone I personally know; it was useful before but now we have the MOET, and as a BS Agriculture graduate from the Cow College with a 2.3 weighted average grade despite some 5s, I have the nerve to say the STK has outgrown its usefulness.

The LCC and STK: Why recommend methods of measuring deficiencies that are deficient in themselves?! Is anyone critiquing or editing the data and information that goes into the database of PRKB? Is there a doctor (PhD) in the house?

In fact, those 3 recommendations are given under the subhead "Assessment of Key Check 5: Sufficient nutrients from tillering to early panicle initiation and flowering stages." Are they telling the farmers that this key check must be performed 3 times with different methods?

What I have just found out about the Pinoy Rice Knowledge Bank tells me that the PRKB is deficient in itself. From my almost 50 years of working as editor with technical data and information in agriculture and forestry, I can tell at a glance if your manuscript has been carefully researched for, intelligently if not well-written, and well-reviewed and revised so that it is clearly consistent in itself.

It's sad to say our knowledge banks have not changed much in the last decade. In fact, I recommended to PhilRice 11 years ago yet what I called "Knowledge Maps" for the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture that I referred to as "The Library That Never Closes" – full of data, information and technology options for farmers in the layman's language that they or their high school child would intuitively understand. Nobody was listening to me; is anyone listening now?

As it turns out, William Dar along with Inanglupa has much to dig into, not just the soils of the Philippines. @