PBBM: What's this I hear that the farmers will be objecting to the Maharlika Investments Fund (MIF).
KA MON: Yes Mr.President, that is unless Sen. MARK VILLAR also excludes his version of MIF where banks will be investing on it as part of compliance to the Agri Agra law, which requires banks to allocate 25 percent of their loanable funds to agri agra projects. To our farmers this will be double jeopardy because banks are currently exempted from the law if they Treasury Bills. While the intention is noble it will put in the last nail to the casket of our dying farmers who remained unbankable due to the neglect of previous administrations. Sir, this will finally kill the rice industry and our agrarian reform beneficiaries, who your ousted father died for defending with a broken heart as he loved the farmers more than the landed oligarchs.
PBBM: Oh! I was not aware of that implication. Are you telling me also that this could reverse the gains of the green revolution and may even start an agrarian revolution?
KA MON; Yes, Sir. Just imagine if the farmers will start clogging the highways with their tractors or even taking over Malacanang. You will have an undeclared civil war and a social conflagration. Remember you are now leading a nation where 51 percent are self-confessed poor. You must now break this curse where the rich get richer and the poor, poorer. NEDA which you chair recently approved high- impact infra projects that does not include creating a significant increase in employment. It’s just like borrowing money from ODA to build multilevel condominiums in squatter colonies that targeted recipients could not afford for lack of gainful employment. The reported growth seems to be based on (underground) self- employment that could end anytime. For example, the millions of farmers are self- employed as before. A sibling takes over an inherited agrarian farm of 1 hectare and splits it to half hectare each, that is not additional employment but would add to the statistics of poor families.
Sir, you are being deceived. They are talking of lies or even a "Marites" as they say. There are three kinds of lies. "Lies, Dammed Lies and Statistics. So please watch out for these.
PBBM: Thanks for this explanation, Ka Mon. What do you propose should be a short- term NEDA high- impact project for say one year?
KA MON: There are many. For example your administration can fund for the additional planting of beans that they grow in Mexico to develop into a food chain industry that could offer cheaper and healthier food package affordable to poor students making them healthier instead of the fake burgers and high sugar drinks that makes them diabetic. We are importing the lowly mungo which is very easy to grow even in dry uplands among the indigenous people, which they can barter with the lowlanders for rice, which are priced double in their communities. We can plant mungbean in dry season as a year-round cash crop. Ka Sonny developed the TRENCH FARMING TECHNIQUE that takes advantage of the permanent moisture of the soil beneath the top soil that gets dry after the rains This is because of the capillary action bringing up moisture from the aquifers go through the plant. The mungo plant in every harvested rice field and idle lands can now serve as a carbon sink. When planted continuously in the same farm it will even improve the soil and can be applied for Carbon Credit. We now have an investor from Texas of Mexican descent named Cris Hauston who can teach us with KaMMMPi, a farmers federation to make these into a cheaper food chain products, given the chance.
Hence, our uplands and idle lands can be productive for the whole year. Why not convert those square meters into mungbeans, called green gold, so we don’t import mungbeans and cashew that our IPs and upland farmers and even rice farmers with idle farms can easily grow.
Pls review this whole conversation so you can understand. It is just "one bogie dance away of your free time.