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MANILA: We Filipinos are rebelling loudly against the politicians who have made themselves filthy rich with the people's money to the tune of PhP 10 billion. There is much hate email, so much hate comments, so much social (mass) media furor. And yet we don't rebel loudly against the politicians who have deprived the poor coco farmers of their income to the tune of PhP 150 billion; there is hardly any social media uproar. That is to say, we Filipinos are rebelling because of the stolen 10 billion but not because of the stolen 150 billion. We Filipinos are crazy! As for me, I'm thinking less of the dozens of erring politicians and more of the suffering millions of farmers. So, I'm announcing a Coop Revolution for millions of poor Filipino cultivators of the soil. In Creative Thinking, you don't have to be crazy, but it works! Everyone is thinking of what to do with those Senators and Representatives who have enriched themselves - shame them, jail them, ...

MANILA: We Filipinos are rebelling loudly against the politicians who have made themselves filthy rich with the people's money to the tune of PhP 10 billion. There is much hate email, so much hate comments, so much social (mass) media furor. And yet we don't rebel loudly against the politicians who have deprived the poor coco farmers of their income to the tune of PhP 150 billion; there is hardly any social media uproar. That is to say, we Filipinos are rebelling because of the stolen 10 billion but not because of the stolen 150 billion. We Filipinos are crazy! As for me, I'm thinking less of the dozens of erring politicians and more of the suffering millions of farmers. So, I'm announcing a Coop Revolution for millions of poor Filipino cultivators of the soil. In Creative Thinking, you don't have to be crazy, but it works! Everyone is thinking of what to do with those Senators and Representatives who have enriched themselves - shame them, jail them, make them pay. ...

MANILA: IMOD is what to do with those billions in coco funds in the Philippines. IMOD is a 100 billion-peso lesson from India courtesy of ICRISAT. I'll tell you more about it after I harvest other proposals and leave them to dry under the tropical sun. They're all wet! So, there are 100-150 billion pesos of the coco levy fund that belongs to the coco farmers. So, many people have proposals on how to spend those billions in the short term (such as distribute the cash), in the medium term (spend on infrastructure in 2014), and in the long term (put it in a trust fund; apply industry clustering using the value chain approach; create a council to oversee the fund). I prefer the long term, but  not their  long term. Eminent economist  Bernardo Villegas  quotes his colleague  Rolando Dy , another economist and Dean of the Center for Food & Agribusiness of the University of Asia & the Pacific, as recommending "a council for the levy fund that is guided by a boa...

BAGUIO CITY: How do you train agrarian reform farmers to be entrepreneurs? You reform them! We are not looking for any paradigm shift but, you know, if you are creative, you will see your paradigm shifts when you are not paying attention to it. As the inventor of serendipity  Henry Walpole  puts it,  serendipity is finding something you were not looking for . It's Thursday, 01 August 2013. We are in Baguio City at the Conference Hall (4th Floor) of the Brentwood Apartelle at Brentwood Village off Teachers Camp. We are in a workshop with representative farmers of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries' Organizations (ARBOs), which include coops and associations. They are from ARBOs of several towns in the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union and Pangasinan in Region 1. There are about 100 warm bodies participating. Image shows Ms  Maridelle Dizon , CEO of UMIC International, introducing her company's consultancy firm; UMIC is providing the agri-technology training a...

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 "...