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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...

MANILA: Who didn't know Leodegario Ilag? Ody was odd in an intellectual manner, and you were either in awe of him or in dread that he would accost you on the street and you didn't know what he was going to say, or ask. I wasn't a conformist myself, so not necessarily that I appreciated but I understood it.  No, he didn't make a mark on the street; he made his mark in credit - this one I didn't know until today, researching on him. Now I can say that if you are a member of the  UPLB Credit & Development Cooperative  today, you should know enough to thank forever Ody for being what I will call  The Rebirth Father of the UPLB Coop . Your coop, at that time was known as the  UP College of Agriculture Credit & Cooperative Union  and first headed by  Nathaniel B Tablante  ( uplbcdc.net ). Your coop began its life on 03 May 1961, and was simply referred to as  Coop . I know, as I was Sophomore at UPCA at that time. Ody's children say [1] , w...

MANILA: Dreaming of an unlimited number of new Asean entrepreneurs, they met on 29 November 2012 in Bangkok to discuss "Co-Incubation and the Opportunities for Food and Agriculture Start-Up Businesses after ASEAN Integration in 2015." The meeting was organized by the Thai Business Incubators and Science Parks Association (Thai-BISPA), the Asia-Pacific Business Incubation Network (APIN) and  info Dev of the World Bank. My congratulations to Thai-BISPA, APIN, and  info Dev. Yes, your meeting was inspired, but your metaphor was not. Entrepreneurship requires that you be creative. Ladies & gentlemen, the metaphor of incubation puts you in a box. You have to think out of the box. In this case, people incubate eggs, that's all they can do with eggs! I've always wondered why economists and businessmen love to say "business incubation" when referring to the creative collaboration in starting up a business based on new or improved technology. I googled for "...

MANILA: Today, I do not bring you to the factory:  The factory comes to you!  And this is a new story of the famous Ilocano Pinakbet, which surprisingly many people don’t know how to cook, including restaurants you know. And, if you think you know how the factory works, and you know how to cook Pinakbet, this may double-surprise you. Behind a pickup, this cow-pulled travelling store of woven baskets, probably from Mangaldan, Pangasinan, stopping to rest in my hometown of Asingan in the same province, is an excellent metaphor to show what a Coop can do for the people, especially the poor near or far. A travelling store of baskets like this eliminates the middleman; you are buying at factory price. All coops must eliminate the middleman to bring down prices of goods and services to the level of the poor: affordable. We have just established  Nagkaisa , a multipurpose cooperative in my hometown (see also my "A Coop Is Born. Will Nagkaisa wake Asingan up?" 23 October 2012,...

ASINGAN, PANGASINAN: We just ended at noon today, 23 October 2012, the very first General Assembly Meeting of our Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Cooperative held at the Senior Citizens building across from what is known as the Danggay building but which we will willingly call the  Senator Letecia Ramos-Shahani Hall , to honor the lady who planned and funded it through her congressional development fund (pork barrel). For weeks now, we have had the keys to the Danggay building; it is like Occupy Wall Street because Danggay used to be impregnable, off-limits to outsiders. We learned at the GA meeting that Nagkaisa was officially listed in the registry of the Regional Cooperative Development Authority, Dagupan Extension Office on 10 October 2012. We met at the Seniors' conference room because Danggay is an almost-empty building, no chairs and no desks. It's an old building but it's nice, because it's concrete and has withstood the tests of time; it has 2 floors, 2 rest rooms and a...

MANILA – Today at 40, ICRISAT is #1 among the 15 international centers of agriculture of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. This pre-eminence was achieved in about 10 years by Team ICRISAT, with Director General  William Dar  as Team Captain. Metaphor:  ICRISAT @ 40 is ready to take on the world, middle-aged, at the 7th stage of life, according to  Erik Erikson : "Ego Development Outcome: Generativity vs Self-absorption or Stagnation" with "Basic Strengths: Production and Care" ( support4change.com ). This is the time when, Erikson says, "we tend to be occupied with creative and meaningful work and with issues surrounding our family. Also, middle adulthood is when we can expect to 'be in charge,' the role we've (long) envied." Another metaphor:  We have just registered  Nagkaisa , a multipurpose cooperative in my hometown of Asingan, Pangasinan in Central Luzon, the Philippines. Board Member or not, because I ...

MANILA – Today at 40, ICRISAT is #1 among the 15 international centers of agriculture of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. This pre-eminence was achieved in about 10 years by Team ICRISAT, with Director General  William Dar  as Team Captain. Metaphor:  ICRISAT @ 40 is ready to take on the world, middle-aged, at the 7th stage of life, according to  Erik Erikson : "Ego Development Outcome: Generativity vs Self-absorption or Stagnation" with "Basic Strengths: Production and Care" ( support4change.com ). This is the time when, Erikson says, "we tend to be occupied with creative and meaningful work and with issues surrounding our family. Also, middle adulthood is when we can expect to 'be in charge,' the role we've (long) envied."  Another metaphor:  We have just registered  Nagkaisa , a multipurpose cooperative in my hometown of Asingan, Pangasinan in Central Luzon, the Philippines. Board Member or not, because I want o...