A Response to my friend Biana Damilo Jose I thought it for a while whether to answer you or not Biana Damilo Jose because I normally do not go into the details of what I have done for my fellow farmers in the Cordillera region. But then, my second self convinced me I should answer you, in fairness to truth and to make things clearer. When I said I quit, I did not quit helping the farmers. I was a supervising agriculturist then when I resigned with a BS in Agriculture, a Masters degree in Rural Development, another Master’s degree in Development Studies and a Ph.D in Environmental Resource Management from University College Dublin, Ireland. I was primed to be the Director of the National Training Center of the Agricultural Training Institute. I set up a model farm behind Benguet State University where farmers and agriculturists came to see how I grew crops without pesticides. But then things did not turn out as I expected. I did not have political connections so they installed someone with an economics degree to be the director. The person had other plans, most of which followed the trend of the Dept of Agriculture—enhancing crop production with intensive chemical and inorganic fertilizers. During that time, the most dreaded insect pest of cabbage of all crucifers—Diamondback moth—could not be eliminated by farmers. Even with all the most potent chemicals. Because it has built resistance. Unknowingly to the public and consumers, Benguet farmers started using cyanide to kill the insect pest. It was effective but it was going to kill people if it continued. The farmers’ practice was known by the public and, all of a sudden, no one wanted to buy any vegetables from Benguet. Thousands of Benguet farmers went bankrupt. Fingerpointing started. Government officials in Benguet were aghast and did not know what to do. I was made Coordinator of the Anti-Cyanide Campaign. We had to come out with an alternative to stop the use of cyanide and stop the insect pest from destroying large tracts of farms in the province. I decided to go to Taiwan. I was accompanied by Prof. Eulogio Cardona. We went to search for the traditional enemy of the diamiondbackmoth, an insect called Diadegma and its relative Apantelles –plutellae. Only they can stop the Diamondbackmoth. There at the World Vegetable Center (formerly Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC), I and Jun and another Filipino Dr. Villanueva, studied, raised and bred the traditional enemies of diamondbackmoth for months. Nine months of hardship. Then we brought it to Benguet, Philippines. We trained thousands of farmers on how to take care of these beneficial insects to hunt and kill the Diamondbackmoth. After two years, the population of the diamondbackmoth went down. The beneficial insects Diadegma and Apantelles were winning. And they are still winning as they have adapted to the region. The rest is history. As fate would call. I passed as a European Union Fellow and went to Sweden for further graduate study right after that. I also want to tell you how I brought the Calliandra calothyrsus tree to the Philippines, a tree now giving benefits to our farmers and the environment. But that is another long story.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 02:24:12 +0000
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