AVANT GARDENER This is my last column as Agriculture editor of the Manila Bulletin and editor-in-chief of Agriculture Magazine. It has been my honor and pleasure to helm Agriculture Online for the past six years, and the Agriculture Section of the Manila Bulletin and Agriculture Magazine for...
AVANT GARDENER Most people know Thou Reyes as an actor who’s appeared on TV, in film, and onstage. What not a lot of people know is that this Metro Manila Film Festival New Wave Best Supporting Actor winner is also an entrepreneur. Reyes is the proud owner of Rice and Shine, a rice retail shop...
AVANT GARDENER (Part II) last week, Glenn Denning, author of Universal Food Security: How to End Hunger While Protecting the Planet, explained why it is possible to achieve universal food security given current resources. Here, he discusses how that can be made possible. Getting everyone on...
AVANT GARDENER In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos wanted to assemble the infinity gauntlet so he could eradicate half of all life in the universe because he claimed that genocide is what is needed to restore balance and to keep resources from being depleted by overpopulation. This was not his...
AVANT GARDENER Arnold Abear, 43, from Bagong Silang, Maramag, Bukidnon is a farmer who has found success in planting coffee. The former rubber farmer switched crops in 2008, after rubber prices dropped during the financial crisis that same year. He was originally from the municipality of...
AVANT GARDENER Rice is life, and this has never been more true than for Filipinos. Around 80 percent of the Philippine population spend a fourth of their income on this grain, amounting to about 33,000 tons per day, nationwide. According to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the...
AVANT GARDENER The agriculture and fisheries sector continues to decline. Last year it accounted for only 2.9 percent of the nation’s GDP, the lowest in five years. This, despite increasing and insistent calls to strengthen the industry amid continuously rising food prices. Despite alarms raised...
AVANT GARDENER Everybody talks about the need for more young people to consider the agriculture industry as a viable career. Danilo Fausto, president of the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food, Inc (PCAFI), a conglomeration of the different sectors in Philippine agriculture, stated in the...
AVANT GARDENER Last week I published an article about Bernadeth Carandang from Medina, Magallanes, Cavite, a high school teacher and secretary of Magallanes-Samahang Magsasaka ng Kay-apas at Medina Agriculture Cooperative (Mag-Samakame). I chronicled her journey from a high school graduate...
AVANT GARDENER Last week, I and a few other press people were at the Bukidnon Integrated Coffee Center (BICC) in Malaybalay. The BICC, which is co-hosted by Nestlé Philippines, has been around since 2008 and is the center of the country’s Robusta program. Almost 90 percent of the country’s...
AVANT GARDENER Earlier this month, I was once again invited by the non-government organization International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) to give a talk on how science and agriculture practitioners can prepare themselves for a media interview. I’ve...
AVANT GARDENER Last week, I wrote about how I went on vacation to Taiwan fully intending to detach from work, but ended up appreciating their agriculture industry and mulling over ours anyway. Now I’d like to focus on the star of my trip: the roasted sweetpotato sold in convenience stores across...
