AVANT GARDENER Typhoon Carina wreaking havoc over parts of Luzon these past few days, drives home the point that our current infrastructure is not storm-proof and that flooding will continue to get worse as the climate crisis intensifies. Thriving forest cover is one of the most effective...
AVANT GARDENER I’ve always said that farm life is the lost Filipino dream, and there is no bigger example of this than out national hero Jose Rizal. Aside from his numerous mentions of food and agricultural products in his novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, his personal letters are...
AVANT GARDENER What’s mundane to one person can be special to another. And once one realizes that, it can become the basis of a profitable business. That’s exactly what happened with Basilio’s Kiniing Food Processing, a Benguet-based small business that processes at least one ton of meat a...
AVANT GARDENER News of farmers dumping tons of unsellable tomatoes by the roadside due to oversupply has been an unfortunate reality for many years. Now, a canning company is doing something about it. Tosen Foods Inc. (TFI) is a canned goods manufacturer whose products are household...
AVANT GARDENER I’ve always maintained that farming is the Filipino dream, and that growing your own food is a path to freedom. Malaya Farms is proof of this. Malaya Farms is a permaculture farm in Calauan, Laguna. It was founded by Rishi Mandhyan, a tech worker currently based in the US. “This...
AVANT GARDENER Farmers and fishers, despite being in professions that quite literally feed the nation, continue to be one of the most marginalized sectors of society, with many practitioners not even making minimum wage. No wonder many see farming and fishing as traps to escape instead of the noble...
AVANT GARDENER The Department of Agriculture-Cordillera Administrative Region (DA-CAR) celebrated the closing of Farmers’ and Fisher Folk's month last May 30 with Paella a la Cordillera held at the Melvin Jones Grandstand. Twenty-six chefs from popular restaurants in Baguio, Manila, and Davao...
AVANT GARDENER This column concludes the three-part series on textile conservationist and cultural advocate Raffy Tesoro’s bid to revive Philippine muslin, commonly known as kulambo. Last week, I wrote about the economic potential of Philippine muslin, some of the challenges Tesoro and his team...
AVANT GARDENER (Part II) Last week, I talked about textile conservationist and cultural advocate Raffy Tesoro’s bid to revive Philippine muslin, more commonly known as kulambo, the fabric used as mosquito netting before plastic became de rigeur, and how for this revitalization to happen, training...
Award-winning writer and former Manila Bulletin Agriculture magazine editor Yvette Tan, one of the Philippines' acclaimed horror writers, won 3rd place with her short story "Horror Vacui" at the Nick Joaquin Literary Awards 2024. Yvette co-hosted “Trese After Dark,” the behind-the-scenes...
AVANT GARDENER The Philippines has lost a lot of indigenous and endemic crops that have, because of commercial reasons, stopped being cultivated. One of these is Philippine cotton. Textile conservationist and cultural advocate (just two of the many hats he wears) Raffy Tesoro plans to revive...
AVANT GARDENER Over the weekend I attended a Harvest Dinner co-presented by WOFEX’s CSR arm and Sanko Plastics, featuring dishes from Chef Waya Araos-Wijangco and Gilbert Lee. “Harvest Dinners are a small gathering of different members of the food service industry and stakeholders for the...
