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COLLEGE, LAGUNA: UP Los Baños has a beautiful campus. It is here where the College Consumers' Cooperative (College Coop) was born. Is it here where it is going to die this year? Historically, the Coop was the very first consumers' coop founded in the Philippines. The date: 20 October 1916. Somehow, this repeated history elsewhere, as the very first cooperative in the world was a consumers' cooperative founded in England in 1844 ( zadruga.obz.hr ). That is why the Coop is celebrating its 100th year this 2016. In fact, the cooperative movement in the Philippines arrived with the Americans at the beginning of their occupation of the islands (Jo Balucanag-Bitonio, 12 July 2012, slideshare.net ). Cooperatives were advocacies of the missionary and religious groups and programs of government agencies designed to help the people especially in the rural areas. It was Commonwealth Act 2508 (Agriculture Credit Association Act) that provided regulations for the creation of cooperatives...

COLLEGE, LAGUNA: This used to be the happy College Consumers' Cooperative canteen at the campus of the Cow College, otherwise known as University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA), otherwise known as UP Los Baños (UPLB). As students, we knew it simply as Coop . We sometimes ate our meals there, sometimes our snacks. We bought our school supplies there, including blue books. Now it's history, the Coop I mean, because UPLB does not seem to treasure history. After 100 years, the Coop cannot hold office there anymore. UP Lady President Emerlinda Roman, who is a product of UP Los Baños, terminated the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the Coop and the University of the Philippines (UP) System in 2009, alleging violations of the terms of the MOA. No amount of appeal to the chancellors – first, Luis Rey Velasco, then Rex Victor Cruz, then Fernando Sanchez Jr – would change UP's mind about saying goodbye to the Coop. Goodbye to all that! Taken just this June, the...

MANILA: You are looking at the image of a folded year-2000 flyer on the oldest consumers' cooperative in the Philippines, which we simply called Coop when we were students in the late 1950s and early 1960s at the University of the Philippines' College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna. This flyer was prepared by the Education & Training Committee: Rosalinda P Garcia (Chair), Avelina M Salcedo (Vice Chair), Sonia B Maristela (1st Secretary), Hosanna H Espanto (2nd Secretary), and Winifrida D Medina (Member). Thank you, Ms Garcia. The first 2 paragraphs of the flyer give us just a little bit of history of the Coop: The first consumers' cooperative established in the Philippines is the College Consumers' Cooperative. It was organized on 20 October 1916 by administrators, professors, employees, and campus residents of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in Los Baños, Laguna. It was initially named the Agricultural Cooperative Company and started ...

MANILA: Of course you can make responsible business out of climate change, such as in producing, processing and pushing any or all of these: drought-resistant and flood-tolerant crop varieties, irrigation-saving technologies, water-harvesting technologies, and building watersheds. So I was interested in reading, just now, early morning of Tuesday, 03 May 2016, when I saw the "Responsible Business Forum" Facebook post of Bruce Tolentino, the roving IRRI Deputy Director General for Communication & Partnerships, on "Recommendations of the Responsible Business Forum (Jakarta, April 25-26) on RICE." So I clicked the link – http://asean-csr-network.org/c/responsible-business-forum  – and read the final recommendations. I was thinking of my own idea of  development agriculture  (visit my  INA DAGA,  blogspot.com ). But first, what is it all about? The webpage says ( asean-csr-network.org ): The Asean Responsible Business Forum (is) a regional platform that (brought...

MANILA: Global warming. Look at the image above; this is the Bad Earth. You and I feel the heat, and you can't help it. The rice farmers feel the devastating effects of the drought, and they think they can't help it. They can, but they don't know how – nobody is teaching them. Not the Department of Agriculture (DA). Well, I don’t know why the DA isn't teaching the farmers what can be done to make a Good Earth. To make a Bad Earth like that, it's easy: just neglect it. (Image from Keith Bacongco, 08 April 2016,  ucanews.com ) The clue is this: It's May, and in the Philippines we expect the rains this month. And when the rain comes, we must harvest the rainwater. Then we will see the Good Earth. Not today. It's too late for the crop that could have been harvested this month or last. Because the farmers whom we failed to teach did not anticipate the devastating effect of the drought. On record, as early as May 2014, the weather bureau Pagasa warned of the comin...

MANILA: No, what Mar Roxas said was not a misquote – read on and improve your vocabulary today, courtesy of a supporter of Mar Roxas & Leni Robredo. (Image from  Post Midnight Thoughts,  wordpress.com , but which I posterized.) Miriam Defensor-Santiago: "In all these years, you have been shaped by the elitist background from which you come and in which you operate. Do you not think that the path has been too narrow to be able to become the President of the Philippines?" Mar Roxas: "As Batman said, it is not important how you came into this world. What is important is what you did with your life." The exchange occurred during the presidential debate  PiliPinas  on Sunday, 24 April 2016 at the PHINMA University of Pangasinan in Dagupan City (ANN, 25 April 2016,  Coconuts Manila,   manila.coconuts.co ). ANN (author not named) says in the title of the news item, "Mar Roxas misquotes Batman in presidential debate, this is the correct version." Right after t...

MANILA: Raissa Robles I believe does not believe in Mar Roxas, to say the least, but I thank her for the photograph above ( raissarobles.com  dated 2014). Thank you Raissa for the photo – it's a perfect image with which I wish to say, "Mar Roxas has been happily carrying the burden of agriculture since at least August 2014." But before that, let me quote Raissa on a positive as well as a negative note: On the face of it, Mar Roxas has the intellectual credentials to run a complex government in the 21st century. He is Wharton-educated. He was once an investment banker who put together successful deals... But let's face it. Mar Roxas is not exciting. The majority who are poor cannot relate to him, perhaps because he lacks a believable narrative for them. Thank you Raissa for saying Mar Roxas has the intellectual credentials to be President! Mar Roxas is not exciting. No Raissa, he isn't. He isn't grandstanding. He isn't lying through his teeth. He doesn'...