The PH Farmer’s Un/Happy Formula

The Little/Big Trouble with PH farmers is that they grow rice without a Robust Sense of Profit & Loss. They do not keep records, as their parents did not teach them business-mindedness instead of simplemindedness – because they did not know themselves either. Poor families!
(Profit & Loss image[1] from BooksTime)

If we want to help emancipate the farmers from the slavery of poverty, here is one way to look at Agriculture with what I call:

The Farmer’s Happy Formula:
Low Costs + High Yield + Zero Harvest Losses +
High Market Price = High Income.

No, the Filipino Farmer doesn’t realize the whole of that, otherwise he would always invoke its magic. No, the Filipino Agriculturist doesn’t realize the whole of that either, otherwise he would teach it.

The realities are, what the Filipino farmer has inadvertently or unknowingly invoked always is:

The Farmer’s Unhappy Formula:
High Costs + Low Yield + Some Harvest Losses +
Low Market Price = Low Income.

Unhappily, neither the farmer nor agriculturist realize all those as belonging to a whole system that is disadvantageous to the farmer.

High Costs

High costs of inputs: seeds, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, weedicides? No problem! The farmer can make a fast loan with someone who has ready cash anytime. (Never mind that it’s usurious.)

Low Yield

When the farmer transplants 1-month old seedlings, or older, overcrowded in zigzag rows with hills not equidistant from each other – that cannot but result in lower yield. But he doesn’t know! Nobody tells him!

Some Harvest Losses

Not using the harvester results in loss of grains from careless humans. In drying over concrete, workers do not retrieve all the grains they lay to dry. If they repeat the drying, they repeat the loss.

Low Market Price

The farmer sells to the middleman who fixes the market to as low a price as possible without looking like a villain. S/he will say, “That’s the prevailing price. We can’t do anything about it.”

Low Income

The result of all of the above? Unsustainable income for the farmer. So he borrows again from the usurer to tide the family until the next harvest season!

Best Income

What can the PH Department of Agriculture (DA) do to save the farmer from his ignorance and help his family escape from poverty and live a sustainable life?

#1: Affordable loans– Government banks extend farmer loans with farmer-friendly interests.

#2: Supervised planting – Farm technicians see to it that the rice seedlings are planted in square patterns, 1 seedling/hill. Seedlings will then produce more tillers, resulting in heavier yields.

#3: Mechanized harvesting – To avoid losses of grains at harvest time, the best harvester is a combine, which also helps bag the grains.

#4: Assisted drying – The DA helps farmer groups acquire mechanical dryers, to reduce labor and losses.

#5: Assisted marketing – This is the most crucial of all the steps in rice farming. The farmer must belong to a group that will help him market his produce, or store it until the price is right.

All that is doing the farmer right!@517

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[1]https://www.bookstime.com/the-accounting-equation