Jun Torres

The classroom is the rice field

A farm school that will help farmers increase rice harvests and the country become self-sufficient in rice will open in San Jose City in Nueva Ecija on June 15, the start of the wet planting season.

“It is like a whisper that would soon be felt in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia in the same way that the shot in Concord Bridge during the American Revolution was immediately heard around the world,” said Emmanuel Libre Osorio, president of the Toledo Green Coconut Farmers Association, one of the initiators of the Primer Farm School.
It is a school without any building; its classroom is the rice field of Barangay Tondod in San Jose City. Its aim is simple: To launch the Rice Profit Protocol (RPP) developed by inventor Alfonso G. Puyat and farmer Fernando Gabuyo Jr.

The RPP will help the country become self-sufficient in rice in two years and export it in three years. If this seems too ambitious, the expectations could be extende3d by a year.

Can this be achieved? Is this claiming too much, like making a car run fueled by water?

There is one way to find out. Launch the training program or school so the RPP can be scrutinized and monitored nationwide.

What is the RPP? Under the scheme, a minimal addition of inputs (slightly less than P2, 000) and a slight modification in methodology will allow a dramatic increase in rice yields in irrigated fields.

Puyat, son of the late Senate President Gil J. Puyat, is a business administration graduate of the University of the Philippines and Wharton. He became a bank and insurance executive. But his passion since his collegiate years was agricultural and scientific research.

Gabuyo is a marine engineering graduate. He served in an inter-island ship as an apprentice before turning full-time farmer.

In 2004, he won second place in a nationwide rice production contest sponsored by Bayer Crop Science. In the dry season planting, he harvested in his irrigated field 221 cavans per hectare. The champion, Eulogio Guira of Davao del Sur, reaped 227 cavans.

Using his regular rice growing practice but applying the Puyat input, Gabuyo harvested 335 cavans a hectare in his irrigated field during the 2005 dry season cropping. This was about one hundred cavans established by a farmer in China.

After the failed attempt, Osorio suggested that a school be put to systematically spread the RPP. But the idea went pfft.

Because of the recent rice crisis and the threat of traditional rice exporters not to sell to the Philippines (this softened only when the country agreed to buy rice at almost four times the regular price), Puyat, Gabuyo and Osorio decided to open the Pimer Farm School in Barangay Tondod on June 15, the start of the wet planting season.

The format is simple. Farmer-trainees work in the farm of Gabuyo and the farms of his farmer-neighbors who have adopted the RPP.

Because the trainees will be in San Jose for four months, the school will also teach them vegetable gardening and freshwater fish culture. While the main focus is rice, there is no harm making the trainees the complete farmer, Osorio said.

The Primer Farm School will organize the 300 Club and the 200 Club, for those harvesting 300 cavans and above 200 t0 299 cavans a hectare, respectively.
For more details about the Rice Profit Protocol, write Osorio at wawell2004@yahoo.com or call 0919-300-0056.