Very recently I met Professor Dodo Aguila, an esteemed colleague who is with the Operations Cluster. He was with somebody named Botong who said he is a farmer from San Ildefonso Bulacan. All at once, having heard he is a farmer (my name means being a farmer), I asked him whether he plants SL8. Yes he knows it, but the problem is with the mindset of old farmers who cant accept new rice technologies... so rice production has stayed static.
Yet Prof Aguila says he will show me Zamboanga del Sur experience with Gov Cerilles who induced farmers to shift to natural but modern methods of farming. They gather manure from duck farms and use them as organic fertilizer. Yield is at 400 cavans per hectare (much much higher than the 300 cavans yield of 300 cavans per hectare of SL8.
They having told me that the old mindset is the enemy of progress and productivity, I told them of my recent experience in a bike ride overnight conversation where an automotive engineer and a jeepney operator where at loggerheads regarding the matter of not touching the pistons during overhaul, with bare hands. The touching of the piston with bare hands leaves a film on the piston and oil no longer flows on the spot where the finger print is, hastening piston and cylinder wall wear and corrosion. The old school thinks that the methodology while cute and high tech is not applicable to the usual engine overhaul that is practiced by old mechanics, repair shops, and machine shops. And yet all that is needed is an open mind and a pair of gloves (cloth or surgical gloves) to observe this modern technology protocol.
The barrier is in the mind. in the Head.
John G was right in his graduation speech before the AdeMU graduates in 2004 that the real barriers are not economic, political, nor social, but the real barriers are in the mind.
Is your cup full?
Do you have an open mind?
"The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one."
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