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...
AVANT GARDENER I just returned from a trip to Taiwan. This was supposed to be a vacation, so I vowed not to think of work during my stay. Of course, this was impossible as I, as a human being, needed to eat, and of course, what we eat is grown, caught, or foraged by farmers and fishers. ...
AVANT GARDENER I visited Bukid Amara in Lucban, Quezon, a popular vegetable and flower farm among tourists and farmers. The 2.5-hectare farm is a sight to behold. The first thing that catches the eye is a field of different types of flowers that stretch out from the farm entrance toward a...
AVANT GARDENER Grace Pascual-Holganza, a corporate accountant by trade, is the owner of Mumshroom, a company that sells products such as chips, patties, and sisig made from white oyster mushrooms cultivated on her family farm in Nueva Ecija. Though she technically started Mumshroom in 2018, just...
AVANT GARDENER Looks like we may or may not have a rice shortage, depending on who you talk to. The Manila Bulletin reported in the beginning of the month (Aug. 1, 2023) that the country has “enough supply of rice that would last for a little more than one month,” specifically 39 days’ worth...
