In the immortal words of the venerable sage Eminem, guess who’s back? Back again.

After almost a year and a half, I return as Agriculture section editor of Manila Bulletin and editor-in-chief of Agriculture magazine. Did you miss me?

We’re in the middle of planning the direction of the magazine and website but here’s what you can expect: substantial and inspiring stories from successful agriculture practitioners from various industries, tips and tricks on crop cultivation and livestock raising, industry news and interviews with agriculture personalities and newsmakers, a spotlight on conservation and research, and hopefully, memes. I hope you’re as excited as I am.

I took a break hoping to get some rest which, unfortunately, did not happen. What did happen was I got to watch Dungeon Meshi, also known as Delicious in Dungeon, an anime about a band of adventurers who have to rescue one of their team members from inside a dungeon. This has something to do with agriculture, I promise you. A warning, spoilers abound!

The party has no money to buy the provisions needed to survive inside the dungeon. They meet Senshi, a dwarf who teaches them how to survive in the dungeon by eating the monsters they come across.

Each episode is structured around the slaying, cooking, and eating of a specific dungeon creature. And it isn’t just a simple kill-cook-eat, either. There are meditations on monster anatomy, which parts are edible, and the best way to cook and serve them, as well as conversations about agriculture and ecology.

In episode four, the party descends to the third level of the dungeon. They find out that Senshi has survived underground for a decade because he’s managed to grow vegetables on golems. He also drops a bit of wisdom about living with respect to one’s environment:

“The dungeon is the same as a field. If you don’t take care of it right, you can’t enjoy what it brings you. My thinking is, in here, I eat what I grow or hunt, but I always give something back to it. Living like that makes me appreciate the dungeon, makes me feel like when I step (sic) foot in here, I’m part of it all. And that makes me happy.”

After the group harvests fresh vegetables, Senshi simmers the produce in water with some basilisk bacon from their previous adventure to create a Golem Field Fresh Veggie Lunch.

Marcille, a half-elven mage, is disgusted to learn that the vegetables are fertilized using compost from food scraps, as well as human waste, the latter known in our universe as night soil. Senshi explains that it’s also done above-ground, and Marcille admits that even though she knows about the practice, being confronted by it was still a shocker. This is reminiscent of the many city folk in our universe who “know” that food is grown, fished, or hunted, yet balk when confronted with the realities of how their food gets to their plate. This illustrates how far removed many humans are from our food system, something that contributes to the belittling of the agriculture industry.

The party also finds out that the golems are what keeps the monsters from the lower floors from escaping the dungeon, so Senshi’s working with them is part of keeping the dungeon ecosystem healthy.

It turns out that the Philippines isn’t the only place that experiences an overabundance of harvest. Realizing that the season’s harvest is more than they can eat, circumstances dictating that he can’t sell them at the moment, Senshi says, “I didn’t want to leave these rotting on the Golems (sic), but if we can't trade them off, we’ll just have to toss ‘em,” to which Marcille, incredulously answers, “This is out of the question! We can’t waste this food! After all the work it took to grow, it’s perfect and shiny and delicious.”

Food waste concerns abound, especially in an underground lair where food is hard to come by. Fortunately, the dwarf manages to trade his vegetables with the orcs who roam the dungeon. He also teaches them to bake bread, but that’s another story.

I love it when agriculture pops up in pop culture. The Japanese and Koreans are particularly good at this. They somehow always manage to insert an intimation on food and agriculture in the most unrelated show or movie, and I feel that it’s a testament to the importance they give the food industry.

I believe that these seemingly insignificant snippets are really very important messages in disguise. It reminds us that the creators come from a society that values where its food comes from and who produces it, and it reminds us that if we want to thrive as a society (or even just a community), we should, too.