Common Cause @

MANILA:  Inclusive  is the single word I'll use to describe what we have in mind about what to do with all those billions of pesos of the coco levy funds. Not the inclusive of NEDA in the Philippines but the inclusive of ICRISAT & Partners in India. My story today is inclusive of my own mistake. Yesterday, at exactly 0815 hours 30 October 2013, I was at the Senate building near Manila Bay off Roxas Blvd behind the GSIS HQ thinking all the while that at 0900 hours would be the public hearing at the Senate presided over by Senator  Cynthia Villar  as Chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food. I quickly learned from the guard at the entrance, who went on his way to bring me a printed page announcing activities at the Senate, that there was a public hearing scheduled at 1000 hours on Finance but not on Agriculture & Food. I went up to Rm 503 anyway, and  Sinta , the front girl at Senator Cynthia's office, told me that instead, Senator Cynthia was...

MANILA: How do we handle the PhP 100 billion from the coco levy fund of the Martial Law years with so many people wanting to lay their hands on the treasure? First, let us humble ourselves, pray and turn from our dreadful ways. Next, let us learn how the FAO handles funds for poor farmers in the drylands of Africa, and learn how ICRISAT & Partners helps the poor farmers rise from poverty in the drylands of India. The idea from FAO is relatively old; the one from India is recent. We should relate to them both in a new, creative way. Combining the concepts, I'll call the strategy  Inventory Inclusive (In2) . In2, I say, will turn that PhP 100 billion coco levy into 100 billion opportunities for all farmers to rise from poverty. I must differentiate: "Rising income" is not the same as "Rising from poverty." I say to raise income is too modest that it is immodest! "The key is farmer income," says  Rolando Dy , Director of the Center for Food & Agri...

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO: I'm beginning to write this in this city in La Union in Northern Philippines. 24 November 2013: I was the facilitator the other day and yesterday, Saturday, for the 2nd installment of a farmers' training under the auspices of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) contracted for by UMIC International, of which we are consultants, under the project titled  Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity and Economic Support Services  (ARCCESS). ARCCESS is unique and brilliant, if you ask me; my congratulations to the DAR. ARCCESS demands the best in you as consultant; it demands the best for the DAR farmers; it demands the best from the farmers too. The Department of Agriculture (DA) should learn from it too, if the DA knows what's good for the farmers. For the farmer beneficiaries of the agrarian reform law, via ARCCESS, the DAR wants  primarily , as according to our Terms of Reference, the "provision of decision-support tools" with the assumption th...

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...