OPINION: What’s to be done?

by Jose Cortez

One of the weaknesses of our agri-production system is the woeful lack of modern storage facilities cum rice mill that could serve as food banks for our farmers and their families.

This aside from preserving rice or grain harvests for a certain period, before marketing to retailers, wholesalers, exporters and integrators.

Those of us who lived near rice mills in our youth have seen the wastage resulting from poor storage of grains.

Around thirty (30%) to forty (40%) percent of the palay fed into the rice mill is wasted during the milling process. Add the wastage due to mice, insects and thieves.

Rice hull, which could be used as feeds for poultry and swine, and could be ground into medicinal bran , is just left behind the mill at the mercy of the sun and the rain and wily merchants.
What can be done?

Besides asking the government, both local and national, to set up storage facilities, such as a community of silos, organized farmers like ARBS or cooperatives could pool their resources to put up the structures. Individual granaries could be constructed with detailed specs from Philrice and IRRI.

A well researched feasibility study on silo construction can be funded by well-meaning NGOs as well as, initial operating capital, if within the capabilities of international NGOs.

*****

By the way, the Russians seem to have forgotten the art of war, or euphemistically, military science.

Despite the Putin army’s initial advantage in resources, both human and materiel, thus taking the offensive in February, the Ukrainians have turned the tides of war around.

The Ukrainian army is on the offensive with Russians trapped, and demoralized in the Crimea and Southern Ukraine. At a huge cost to both countries at war.

War is evil, an unjust war, more so. Putin’s war is an unjust, cruel and capricious war no matter how propagandists and trolls rationalize it.

(About the writer) : Jose Cortez has been a political journalist for 50 years, writer, and editor. In pre-Martial Law days, he wrote for Manila Times, and post-Martial Law for Philippine Graphic and Metro Sun.