Wednesday, October 11, 2006 Covington: The week that was (40) By Gary Covington Looking in
BANANAS and billboards hogged the news pages last week -- billboards mainly for falling over and killing people. A lot of breast-beating's been going on. Guys in hard hats, lips pursed, carrying clipboards, pointing to the metal monstrosities - this one's too close to the highway, that one straddles a power line. Apparently, in one area of manic Manila and I forget which, 97% of billboards are without a permit. 97 percent! Shouldn't the folks responsible be taken out at dawn and shot? Naw -- billboards will be the flavor of the day for a couple of weeks and then it'll be business as usual until the next disaster.
Bananas and on Tuesday the growers were dishing out boxes of their fruit to our honorables down at the SP. My first thought was oh-ho, good old-fashioned bribery is alive and kicking but no, as banana front man Noel Venus explained, the gift giving aimed to 'show and share the banana industry's bounty with the council.'
That's all right then but - one small point - according to press reports, how come that amongst all the honorables it was only councilors Orcullo and Avila who missed out on the banana bounty? Surely not because the duo are the prime movers and shakers of the proposed ban on aerial spraying?
It's all a bit juvenile isn't it? First the anti-spraying lobby hand out kalabasa awards to a few honored honorables -- a genuine free lunch -- and then the fruit growers give out boxes of bananas.
And whatever has the humble squash done to deserve such an insult? I saw a couple of folks on the early evening news who were really put out over the implied slur to their favorite vegetable. Didn't we realize how nutritious squash was? All that fiber? I was fully expecting to see placards in the SP's debating chamber the next day -- "Reinstate kalabasa." "No to kalabasa awards." and "Horsewhip Maas." That sort of thing.
Still with bananas and Saturday's paper published a long I-love-the-fruit-companies letter sent in by a Datu Lito Ayog Bangkas. Two points caught my eye. The first was Datu Bangkas's assertion that 'sustainable development' really meant "sustainable poverty" -- can't you just see NGOs squirming in their seats at that? The second point was the Datu's comment that chemical pesticides and fungicides and so on are used on a host of crops including rice.
Once upon a time I used to drive up to Tagum two or three times a week. Going north, just past Carmen, there is a long straight bit of road between the River Ising and the Tuganay iron bridge and on the left are spread out hectares and hectares of rice paddy.
I'd admire this every time I passed. The rice was obviously well irrigated; lush and bright green, which ripened to a golden yellow as the months went by. But then I noticed here and there planted in the fields' small signs and one day I pulled to a stop to read them. No wonder the crop was so lush, the signs bragged of this fertilizer or that and of pesticides and herbicides and molluscides and fungicides galore with which the crop had been doused.
I'd think about that for a few miles down the road but not for too far. After all, just about everything we eat or drink is contaminated in some way; isn't it a teeny-weeny bit late to start worrying?
