Duterte's State Of Lawlessness & Hilario's Law of Diminishing Returns

MANILA: I title my photograph now Point of Diminishing Returns. The above posterized image is from an original taken by me on 28 November 2015 at a roughly cemented hotel ground in Bolinao, Pangasinan where we stayed to finish our consultancy report for the extension project Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity & Extension Support Services (ARCCESS) of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). We were UMIC consultants of ARCCESS, and if we did not prepare completely satisfactory reports, DAR might look at them as points of diminishing returns for our 2 teams.

I did not record the name of the object but, after that shot, it would be a point of diminishing returns for it in terms of attention, and then it would be thrown into the garbage can. Now that there is a new head of the DAR, will ARCCESS be thrown into the waste basket? I will miss those opportunities to talk to the farmers about unexplored territories (theirs) that I have already explored in my mind. What I know is that if the farmers don't explore the options we presented to them, their agriculture will remain in a state of lawlessness as far as natural laws are concerned. Chemical agriculture, which is the Bible of farmers, does violence to the environment and, therefore, is a direct cause of the overall diminishing returns from farming.

Is there diminishing returns now from the war on drugs? In the wide field of agriculture, there has always been a state of lawlessness that perpetuates poverty. Hate the sin, not the sinner. Since I'm an agriculturist and one of the sons of a farmer, the grievous sin I have been thinking of and blogging zealously against since early 2007 is the pervasive poverty of millions of farmers in the Philippines alone. As a member of the Board of Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Cooperative in my hometown of Asingan, and having been one of the extension consultants of the DAR, I have seen firsthand how poverty keeps rearing its ugly head in the same farm families; multiply them by millions. It's the system, stupid!

What do we do when the whole Philippines is declared by its new President under "a state of lawlessness" or "a state of lawless violence" as reported early morning of today, Saturday? (Totel V De Jesus, 03 September 2016, newsinfo.inquirer.net): If you are truly a Christian, you know what to do; find it in Romans 12:21. It is a commandment; if you don't know or don't remember what that is, Google it! It's all stated in 11 words, simply. I can summarize it for you even simpler, in 3 words, and it is also from the Bible: "Love your enemies!"

When it comes to the perpetually poor farmers, I only know one way to love: Follow what I now call Hilario's Law of Diminishing Returns, a new one because I've just invented it. Remember West's Law of Diminishing Returns you learned in high school yet? I just learned that it came from the British "mild free trader" Edward West sometime in 1813 (Edwin Cannan, Economic Journal v2, 1892, socsci.mcmaster.ca).

Edward West's Law of Diminishing Returns states: 
As a factor in production is increased, the rate of increase of the marginal returns decreases.

Frank A Hilario's Law of Diminishing Returns states: 
As the factor of marketing is increased, the rate of increase of the farmer's returns decreases.

To love the farmers, we must repeal the Law of Diminishing Returns!

Is Duterte seeing or feeling diminishing returns on his war on drugs that he feels he has to control everything? The President must learn his way to love more people more. Even as we citizens must in our own little ways.

For specific lessons in loving the farmers in a long-term way, I continue to look beyond my country. In 2007 yet, I began to advocate for Primate Change the month after I began writing for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), specifically in my essay "Primate Change? Or Climate Change? You Choose! – The Blogal Village Voice" (03 March 2007, iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.co.id). I have since that year been looking for science-based insights for improving the lives of Filipino farmers. And I have since been learning from ICRISAT, which is based in India, new or improved technologies and systems in saving agriculture and saving the farmers; in fact I have produced volumes and ICRISAT has published 7 of my books on popularizing science for development.

Learning from ICRISAT, one way of loving the poor farmers is to advocate for a change in the marketing mindset of people all over the world, including or most especially the economists, who with their advocacy and blessings propagate and perpetuate West's Law of Diminishing Returns against the farmers. They propagate the myth that middlemen other than the producers themselves are a necessary evil.

The ICRISAT's strategy called Inclusive Market-Oriented Development (IMOD), adopted in 2010 during the 11th year of William Dar being Director General of ICRISAT, showed the world, including the World Bank, how the diminishing returns to farmers can be reversed (my words):

Advocate and assist farmer groups to help themselves process and market their own produce.

Since the farmers we are trying to help are poor, they need more than just being told where to go. ICRISAT knew that, so IMOD calls for what I shall now call a partnership of equals (POE): government, business, science, philanthropy, civil society, non-government organizations, and peasantry.

ICRISAT expanded the reach of POE and, together with the state government of Karnataka and other public & private partners, including universities, launched what they called Bhoochetana, land rejuvenation. That has been an unqualified success. (I have written many times about it; try my essay, "The Bhoochetana Revolution. Political will applied with science," 05 July 2012, A Magazine Called Love, blogspot.co.id).

Statewide, Bhoochetana was a success; what about village to village? We cannot ignore village economics. It takes a village to keep a village.

So now they're modelling IMOD success in India in the villages. They have finished planning and are now implementing what they call Suvarna Krishi Grama Yojane, or the Golden Agriculture Village Scheme (GAVS), which was launched 03 August in the Hirebidnur town of Karnataka, India (icrisat.org).

From ICRISAT, this latest news about GAVS: "Farmers in 1,000 villages of Karnataka, India, are expected to benefit in a major way through a new collaborative initiative that was launched recently" according to ANN (author not named, "Golden Agriculture Village Scheme for Karnataka, India, farmers," September 2016, ICRISAT Happenings, icrisat.org). "In the first phase, 105 villages will be developed as model villages and targeted farmers’ incomes will be increased by 20% in one year through augmented productivity, diversification and market linkages." ANN says it is a "strong collaboration in dryland agriculture" and a project of "the Government of Karnataka and ICRISAT along with consortium partners."

I must hurry to say that the essence of market linkages mentioned in the name of GAVS is not simply electronic or face-to-face; via a contract, it is a cemented connection between producer and consumer, and does not involve a man in the middle, nor does it require new farm-to-market roads. The production, processing, storage and transportation are arranged for by the farmers. This is supply meeting demand. Ideally, it involves institutional buyer-consumers (demand) and any number of farmers' organizations (supply).

Note that ANN says GAVS is a collaboration of consortium partners. Wherever they are, farmers need strong partners most especially from outside their villages.

I will describe GAVS in India as the farmers' easy access story: easy access to credit, inputs, technologies, systems, markets etc.

I will describe The State of Lawlessness in the Philippines declared by President Rodrigo Duterte as his easy access story: easy access to all kinds of inputs he believes are necessary in the war on drugs that he has declared. Sorry to say, such declaration implies to me that, in the first place, there has been prior poor planning in waging that war and insuring success.

Collaboration is a lesson in agriculture from ICRISAT in India, neither the primacy of leadership nor the initiative of followership not connecting at all. From January 2000 to December 2014, William Dar was a superb Team Captain of ICRISAT and brought it from Struggling to Outstanding among the 15 CGIAR international centers. To succeed mightily, a leader must connect and be a servant of all.

In the pursuit of a war against the poverty of farmers, the application of the Golden Agriculture Village Scheme in India has a bright future in the Philippines because it has been well-researched and well-planned beforehand. Nothing succeeds like good planning!

06 September 2016. Essay word count, excluding this line: 1454