AVANT GARDENER “If you plant, you can eat.” So goes the often repeated line from the multi-award-winning Tigkiwili, one of the eight full-length films in the Puregold CinePanalo Festival, which runs until March 25 at Gateway Cineplex 18. The film garnered seven awards, including...
AVANT GARDENER If there are two things many Filipino children lack these days, it’s a love for reading and an appreciation for farming. Joel Donato Ching Jacob, HIV counselor and author of the Scholastic Asian Book Award winning novel Wing of the Locust and its sequels Orphan Price and...
AVANT GARDENER Department of Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu-Laurel Jr., through the efforts of the Agribusiness and Countryside Development Foundation (ABCDF), recently met with some members of the youth to discuss the state of Philippine agriculture. ABCDF is a non-profit...
AVANT GARDENER The Philippine cacao industry has been growing but still remains underdeveloped. Some local chocolatiers are trying to change this by offering tree to bar artisanal chocolates. One of them is Anitu Food Forest, a Bukidnon-based chocolate brand who sources its cacao beans from...
AVANT GARDENER Last week, I wrote about Anitu Forest Food Processing, a small chocolate brand from New Kidapawan City, Bukidnon. Now, I’m writing about the Anitu Forest Farm, the syntropic farm that produces the cacao that goes into the handcrafted chocolates. Anitu Forest Farm is run by...
AVANT GARDENER A lot of farms in the Philippines are made up of small plots of land, which is why the government encourages the formation of cooperatives, to take advantage of economies of scale. The Philippine Chamber of Cooperatives was created to further increase the opportunities that...
AVANT GARDENER I spent part of the holidays watching a couple of Kdramas and one thing I noticed was that both placed a value on farming but totally in passing. If you were a casual watcher and not someone on the lookout for agricultural content, they would have been easy to miss. Beware,...
AVANT GARDENER Last week, I guested on The Powerful Komiksman Podcast hosted by Jerald Dorado, aka komiksman, which can be viewed in full on YouTube. We were introduced by Jean Karl Gaverza who runs Philippine Spirits, a website dedicated to the various mythological creatures that can be...
AVANT GARDENER It’s the second week of the new year, the week when—let’s face it—everyone really returns to work, and then just barely. As we all know, many agricultural workers aren’t able to take long breaks. Pests aren’t going to stay away from your field just because it’s...
AVANT GARDENER The Philippines is in a precarious position health-wise. Not only are many Filipinos at risk for malnutrition, many are equally at risk for obesity, which itself is a form of malnutrition. “[According to the National Nutrition survey done by the Food and Nutrition Research...
AVANT GARDENER The best way to stop food from being wasted is to eat it. We’ve all been told as children to finish our food because there are people who have nothing to eat. This is a simplified explanation of a complex problem. There are many reasons some people have no access to food....
AVANT GARDENER Do we know why despite being an archipelago, our locally caught fish can be prohibitively expensive despite small fishers being one of the poorest sectors of Philippine society? It comes down to the amount of effort needed to get the fish from the fisher’s boat to the consumer’s...
