Food security can be simple

One garden at a time, one farm at a time, we can definitely encourage consumers to become producers of their own food.

- CHIT U. JUAN

This is the big, hairy, audacious, albeit simple, goal of Carlomagno Aguilar, a self-taught agriculture educator who has been farming for the last 15 years. Experience is indeed a very good teacher, as Carlo had a simple dream: let everyone have access to food. And that dream is slowly coming to fruition as Carlo teaches landowners what to plant and trains institutions like hotels, resorts, and restaurants to grow their own vegetable needs.

Carlo laments the fact that about 30 percent of food produced really goes to waste because of overproduction in the wrong area, misreading of market demands, and logistical issues that contribute to the perishability of vegetables. It sometimes takes days to bring vegetables from Baguio to Palawan, for example. Tomatoes are shipped while green and unripe because the journey will be so long, the tomatoes would turn red by the time they get to their destination! Not exactly how tomatoes should be harvested, because if it were to be used closest to the point of use, it can be harvested at the peak of ripeness or what they call vine-ripened.