People-powered, government-supported innovations
Innovation means uncertainty, and is therefore often resisted.
When innovation comes from the people, and not from government, the resistance may be even stronger. This is why government support for people-powered innovations is most welcome.
When Agriwatch started in 2003, one of its board members was Professor Romulo Davide. Even then, he advocated the vision of “farmer as scientist.” He believes farmers can put discipline in evaluating their everyday experience and become scientists in their own right.
In 2012, Davide became a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee because of this advocacy. The Magsaysay Award states: “farmers consequently multiplied their yields, created productive farming communities, and rediscovered the dignity of their labor.”
Last May 22, following the same spirit and supporting Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala’s vision of rice self-sufficiency, Philrice Executive Director Eufemio Rasco launched “Palayabangan.” This is a nationwide rice production competition that highlights the “10-5 Challenge.”
The Philrice website states: “Palayabangan aims to level up the rice production standards to 10-5 (10 tons/ha yield or 200 cavans) at only P5 input cost per kg of palay. The current average input cost is pegged at P11/kg.”
The attractiveness of this program is that it opens competition not only to the traditional universities and research institutions, but also to non-government organizations and “farmer-scientists,” as Davide advocates.
In a Feb. 22 commentary, I described the gains made by Dante Dizon. He is a “farmer-scientist” who discovered a way to significantly increase productivity at lower cost and less environmental impact. Impressive though his alleged results were, I stated there was a need for official verification by a third party to validate the results. I had recommended that all such claims should go through these procedures so that false claims would not mislead and rob our already poor farmers.
Dizon took this suggestion constructively. He approached Philrice for such verification. However, because of limited funds, Philrice asked Dizon to contribute P170,000 for this verification. Dizon did not have this money and therefore declined the Philrice offer. But with the Palayabangan program, which has only a P10,000 registration fee, Dizon now has an opportunity to have his claims verified.
Another farmer scientist who will benefit from this program is Roberto Versola, a former associate editor of the UP Collegian. In his search to help small farmers, he came upon the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). However, Philrice’s experiments showed that SRI results were not good enough to promote this technology.
Thus, when I found out that 2012 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee Yang Saing Koma was recognized precisely for the SRI technology he used to achieve Cambodia’s increased rice production, I personally brought Rasco to meet Koma. I then told Rasco that Versola disagreed with the methodology Philrice used during the SRI investigation. Rasco immediately said that Philrice would be glad to work with Versola on the methodology for future SRI studies.
In both the Dizon and Versola instances, Rasco showed admirable openness in looking at innovations, even from small farmers like them.
Rasco was Student Council president of UP Los Banos when I occupied the same position at Ateneo de Manila University. Seeing what Rasco has done through Palayabangan, I still see the same desire to contribute to the country that he had then.
I am reminded of Doreen Yu’s quotation of AE Housman’s lines: “When summer’s end is nighing/ And skies at evening cloud/ I muse on change and fortune/ And all the feats I vowed/ When I was young and proud.”
Rasco may be on the way to achieving one of the feats he vowed he would accomplish. Through Palayabangan and the 10-5 Challenge, achieving rice production changes may well bring fortune to small farmers. We will no longer hear a farmer-scientist likening the innovations he offers for government adaptation to the dreams in a Mona Liza song: “Many dreams have been left at your doorstep: they just lie there, and they die there.”
It is hoped that this model of government support for people-powered innovations be duplicated in other areas. In agriculture, emphasis can also be given to upland rice as well as efficient cacao inter-cropping between coconut trees that is so badly needed. In this way, change and fortune will occur more systematically and achieve the elusive goal of inclusive growth.
(The author is chair of Agriwatch, former secretary for Presidential Flagship Programs and Projects, and former Undersecretary for Agriculture, Trade and Industry. For inquiries and suggestions, e-mail [email protected] or telefax 8522112.)
