What a waste of resources!

In the 70's when I was still in college, I had visited several provinces in the Philippines and I was amazed of the awesome sight of greeneries. I saw plain fields with hundreds of hectares planted with rice and other vegetables and green mountains with lush forest and clean waterfalls. What I saw during that time was implanted in my subconscious that I always dreamt of it several times. For twenty years I wasn't able to go back to those places because of the demands and pressures of work coupled with raising a family.

In the mid 90's, I found time to visit one of those places I had gone to. The rice plantation was no longer there. Instead, it was converted into housing subdivisions. Now I can understand why our country find it hard to achieved food sufficiency in rice. We still have to import our basic staple from other countries. And then looking at the mountain, the waterfalls are also no longer there. There were large pockets of areas without trees, an evidence that illegal logging and burning of trees (kaingin) took place there.

In the year 2000, I was able to visit Thailand and five years later, I was able to work in United Arab Emirates for two years. It is always my habit to go to the countryside everytime I visited a new place. There in Thailand countrysides and even in the fringes of the City of Bangkok, large areas are planted with rice & vegetables. They were very strict in their land zoning. Areas devoted to agriculture cannot be converted into housing projects without the consent of parliament. And to think that several Thai agriculturists were trained in the Philippines!

In United Arab Emirates, they were able to grow trees on the desert using underground drip technology and recycling of wastewater. I was again amazed to see a desert planted with more than hundred thousand trees. I was told that UAE authorities conduct an annual inventory of trees and see to it that the number is increasing. Anybody who is found responsible for uprooting trees either intentionally or accidentally can be fined with a minimum of AED100,000. This is also my first time to see a desert land converted into agricultural land. Although, one will also be amazed to see the Nevada desert converted into tourist destination like Las Vegas in USA, the conversion into agriculture is more amazing. In the near future, a desert country like UAE will not only be self-sufficient in food, but will also export agricultural products to its nearby arab countries. The Philippines might as well learned from these two countries.

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Promdi: Adventures from Countrysides

This personal blog shares the writer's experiences in his immersion in the rural areas, having been born in an urban setting and also provide insights into the personal views of the writer in rural development.