Showing posts with label BBM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBM. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Can we modernize the agriculture technology and productivity? Can the promises be kept?

Every generation needs a revolution - an entrepreneurial revolution




This post was amazed by a video on Saudi Arabia modernizing its agriculture.   Their agri contributes about $18.00 billion to their GDP.  Who woud think that this could happen to a country largely covered by desert?

May be Saudi leaders saw that they could not be too dependent on oil exports and coulld not  dependent on agri imports  

It employed several techniques much known to our leaders in achieving such self sufficiency and surplus

     1.   Water
           1.  Tapping aquifers
           2.  Desalination plants
     2.  Helping farmers
          1.  Interest free loans
          2   Technical assistance

    3.  Massive investments in agriculture and technologies    (about $20 billion)


Why cant we achieve the same level of sufficiency and modernization.  We have some of the best schools in agriculture:    UPLB and CLSU  (2/3 of CLSU faculty are doctorate)   Our Sec of Agriculture is no less than the President.   We have plenty of rains and water in the Philippines.   We do not need desalination plants like Saudi

Why are we having shortages in onions, garlic, and lately in eggs   and oh yes sugar and rice.  This is an embarrassment (All tallks lang during the campaign to modernize agriculture? More passion needed

I met Dr. Tito Cantado who owns a company that produces Noni Juice and he bewailed the state of agriculture world wide (as he served as consultant of FAO.   The focus on subsistence farming 
and traditional farming are roadblocks to agricultural productivity   Corporate farming, leases to agricultural lands under land reform (as what DOLEfil  is doing at Gensan

Let us wake up men.