AVANT GARDENER The Philippines is a center for biodiversity. Unfortunately, the significance of this is lost on many Filipinos. Many Filipinos do not understand that flora and fauna play a huge role in the health of the planet. Sometimes, well-meaning people will implement poorly-thought out...
AVANT GARDENER Small fishing communities remain one of the poorest sectors of Philippine society, so I’m always happy to feature enterprises that aim to support their livelihood directly. Sinaya Seafood may be the industry’s newest player, but the company is backed by more than a decade of...
AVANT GARDENER Folks were up in arms last week over the National Economic and Development Authority’s (NEDA) statement that Filipinos who spend ₱64 per day on three meals are not “food poor.” The amount was based on the 2023 food threshold computed for a family of five. This was an...
AVANT GARDENER Farmers are known to be set in their ways. Sometimes, the best way to get them to adopt something new is to show them that it can make them good money. Purest Heart Honey is the brand of honey sold by Guadaleva Coteng, 30, of Purest Hearts Apiary Enterprise in Itogon, Benguet....
AVANT GARDENER Last weekend I attended an event called Tipsy with Sustainability, which aimed to gather like-minded people for an afternoon of seed-saving, drink mixing, and bonding over topics that have to do with sustainability. The event was hosted by Raf Dionisio, co-founder of Make...
AVANT GARDENER This week, a group exhibit by Pablo Capati III, Geraldine Javier, Paulo Lozano, Mikee Naval, and Jose Solon Perfecto called Terroir and Tapestries opens at Aphro Living, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza in Makati. Terroir is a French term that refers to the distinct environment in which a...
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...
