Friday, January 04, 2008 Ledesma: Small windows of opportunity By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
IN HER book "The Secret" Rhonda Byrne writes, "Your current thoughts are creating your future life. What you think about the most or focus on the most will appear as your life."
What distinguishes the rich from the poor, the successful from the failure is how and where their thoughts are focused on. The successful, regardless of what their station of life was, display a peculiar character that makes them so distinct from those who failed in their quests. They see opportunities where others see bleakness and hopelessness. Look at our taipans. Not a few of them are poorer than those who peddle rubber slippers and balot at the Rizal Park. The Chinese trader who used to buy your empty bottles and old newspaper before had set his eyes to become a successful businessman. Mang Juan tries his luck on the same thing but never frees himself from the clutches of poverty. Why? Because his thoughts are always shackled by the overwhelming and negative vibrations that he will always be poor. Poverty is part of his consciousness and sadly this becomes him personified.
These thoughts remind me of Gov. Dolfo del Rosario who treated us and other newsmen with cups after cups of coffee at Figaro along Sales St., shortly before the Christmas break. The governor, who chairs the Davao Integrated Development Program, invited us there before his meeting with a group of foreign fund managers at the regional office of the Department of Trade and Industry.
The governor opened up by revealing that he has produced not a few millionaires among small landowners who not too long ago can hardly make both ends meet with the meager produce they have from their farms. He cited farmers who plant only rice or corn for their day-to-day subsistence. The production was minimal and their income so paltry because their farms, they found out later, were not actually suited for either rice or corn.
The governor said that he had the soil analyzed by his technicians who found the farms to be suited for bananas. He said: "I have made them millionaires. After planting the right crop - exportable bananas - they started making money and since then they never looked back."
I asked the governor why other growers complained of not getting their expected share. "It is because they are not aware of their potentials and of their crops worth. I teach them how. I grew up in the industry and I know the nuances of banana growing and marketing," Governor del Rosario said.
The governor also bared that he will make every Monday "People's Day." This will give him the opportunity to listen to his constituents. He intimated that in his visits to the barangays he found out that there is so much opportunities for a marginalized family to really increase their earning potentials. "They have not seen the opportunities that are right within their reach." The governor cited a farmer with four hectares of land but cultivates only one. He has four full-grown mango trees. He does not know how to induce the trees to flower and how to take care of the fruits so that it will not be devoured by pests. He used the mango trees only as shade for his carabao and pigs. The farmer never believed that his mango trees can flower and bear fruits bountiful enough he can sell them to the market. Governor Del Rosario related that he sent his technicians to assist the farmer, teach him the rudiments of mango culture, what else to do to make them flower and eureka! What used to be a picture of a destitute farmer is now full of enthusiasm and vigor. He made good money from what used to be just shade trees for his carabao. He is raising more pigs and what used to be three hectares of idle lands are now cultivated and fully productive.
--
Who would ever think that we can export fresh cardaba bananas except when they are processed into chips? It takes an entrepreneurial mind of Ferdie Maranon to discover that the simplest way to export fresh cardaba is simply by peeling it off, blast freeze it, give it an excellent packaging and presto! On a per kilo basis, frozen cardaba is 25 times a better earner compared to Cavendish. Believe it or not.
It is the likes of Governor Del Rosario and Ferdie Maranon who show us that there are so much opportunities around us if only we do not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by our own weaknesses, our self-limitation and defeatism. We must always be able to see windows of opportunities.
