A step at a time

As we celebrate Mama Mary’s birthday today, we are reminded about how she humbly accepted and obeyed God’s message to bear Jesus Christ.

Mama Mary took that crucial step, just a step at that precise moment, to say yes. That small step, however, turned out to be THE redemptive step of complete obedience and love that allowed God and His created beings to be reconciled in Jesus Christ, His Son!

Happy, happy birthday, our dear Mama Mary and thank you deeply for taking that crucial step of obedience and love to set us all free to return to our God!

Last Thursday, we had the occasion to reflect on the crucial significance of taking a step at a time when we went south with the team of Dr. Hirotsune Kimura of Nagoya University and Atty. Ian Manticajon who took time from his very hectic schedule that involves balancing the demands of being a lawyer and of being a UP Cebu lecturer to coordinate the schedule for that day.

Together with Cebu Biodiversity George Chu and Bob Bajenting, THE untiring advocate and GURU for food sufficiency through organic farming and some of his friends, the team first visited an organic piggery raiser in Perrelos, Carcar and then proceeded to the forest of Nug-as in Alcoy.

Can you imagine a piggery that is clean and without smell? Some of the neighbors did not even realize there were pigs being raised nearby!

Can you further imagine very contented, fat pigs that love to feed on ordinary malunggay, saluyot, and whatever other leaves offered them? Can you go on imagining the pigs loving some fermented local concoction so much, for the duration of our visit, the pigs hardly made any squeaking, noisy sound?

Bob and his natural farming team are encouraging the organic pig raisers to wean away from commercial feeds and the former expensive practice of raising them, with commercial feeds, in cemented areas, which need so much water to keep the piggery clean and safe. Now the pigs have sawdust beds as their home, their waste saved, and converted to fertilizer.

Not only the pigs are contented, the organic pig raisers report positive financial returns for this more natural type of pig raising. This practice also allows for an eco-friendly and sustainable livelihood that can be adopted not only in rural areas but even for urban areas as well!

A seemingly small step for these organic pig raisers, but a very crucial one for our people and our country!

If these organic pig raisers can finally reach the point where they can finally be fully independent from commercial feeds and completely be dependent on leaves that abundantly grow in anyone’s backyard garden, and with piggeries that are easy to maintain and maintain, where the pig waste is converted for fertilizer to grow more food for them and for human beings or even be converted to biogas (hence, another step towards energy sufficiency), what a happy breakthrough this will be for our country!

Healthier and cheaper pork, happier pigs whose waste gets converted to fertilizer and biogas - that small step for organic piggery may yet find more of our people healthier, wealthier and wiser! Can Cebu as well boast of being THE center of healthier lechon?

At Nug-as, those who, like George Chu, who continue to take the hard, challenging but commendable road to encourage the mountain residents to protect the remaining forests of this province (also, George adds, as a legacy to future generations of Filipinos!) are rewarded every time they see the trees as well as the forest being maintained by the mountain stewards!

Not only are the hard wood type of trees proudly standing, the indigenous with the newly planted varieties, the mountain residents have also taken the small but crucial step towards self-sufficiency by raising healthy tomatoes, eggplants, carrots, okra, and other food crops to meet both their daily and livelihood needs! 

Up in the mountain forest of Alcoy and down at a modest organic piggery in Carcar came the inspired and hopeful realization that our people can certainly rise beyond poverty, this nation can certainly move towards genuine, sustainable development, food sufficiency and security, a healthier home for more contented, beautiful Filipinos by taking the crucial one step at a time, to plant plants and trees, to raise pigs, first by and for themselves, then next for and with others, then finally for and with the whole nation!

***

Email: