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Friday, September 02, 2005
Roperos: Teaching and gardening
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
There is this call by Agriculture Regional Executive Director Eduardo Lecciones for families in urban and suburban communities to do some vegetable gardening, utilizing whatever available space they have.
He suggests that urban agriculture could very well overcome our short supply of vegetables. Since veggie farming needs costly inputs, rural farmers have decided to focus on traditional corn and rice farming, which answers a basic food need.
Vegetable farming assures the farmers immediate cash rewards, but the high cost of vegetable cultivation has driven rural folks away from it.
In Cebu province, Mantalongon in Dalaguete and certain communities in San Fernando, Liloan and Balamban are known vegetables producers. But on the whole, current veggie production here does not meet actual Cebu consumption needs.
Lecciones, who like us is a man with peasant beginnings, said that “one doesn’t need to have a garden to plant vegetables. Residents in urban areas like Cebu City can always plant vegetables in pots, old tires, and plastic jugs.”
Of course, what the DA proposed was attempted before. There was a time when cities were urged to plant vegetables. Remember those tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers in pots? Or those potted calamansi-bearing fruits used as plant décor?
The problem was that the practice did not become a habit and thus faded away like old soldiers. However, as you can see, short supply of veggies is resurrecting it.
But what I think is missing in the set-up is the absence of school participation in the urban farming idea. I recall that prior to the outbreak of World War II, gardening was a “must” among grades four, five, and six pupils.
I cannot say really when the school curriculum that included gardening was changed. But I cannot see vegetable gardens anymore in many schools today.
It is rather an undeniable reality that many of our school grounds have become too small for expansion in the face of a tremendous increase in the number of young Filipinos needing elementary education.
Right now, many barangay schools are located in areas that average only about a hectare and have hardly enough space for athletics, much less vegetable gardens. Thus our young in the towns and cities study without having tried their hand at taking care of veggie seedlings, or planting onions, hot pepper, and tomatoes.
When news of WW II reached us one Monday morning in December 1941, I was in Grade V, and we were in our school vegetable garden, watering our plants. When the war was over, and we returned to school, something changed in our educational system.
Perhaps in order to make up for lost time, we were accelerated to the succeeding grades thrice in one year. I found myself promoted to grade six right at war’s end, and then to first and second year high school the following year.
At that time then, we were no longer required to cultivate vegetable garden plots. I do not know whether those who succeeded us were asked to.
But it seems, vegetable gardening in our schools has lost its priority position in the curriculum, and our young kids appear to like better dancing the rock n’ roll rather than rocking the school ground soil to make vegetable garden plots. It’s a pity, really.
(September 2, 2005 issue)
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