1.2 COOL LESSONS FROM OLD SOCIETIES AND NEW (late 80’s early 90’s)

In the early 90’s we studied the work of India, on the ecology and biology of agriculture. We also learned about large landscape approaches of China to land rehabilitation. In the US east coast, we captured take home principles from the rational forest land use planning. We also learned about the local networks of people in Australia taking care of their landscapes (Landcare).

These helped build the foundations of my views on the convergence of Agriculture and Forestry as basis for sustainable food. During this period, we also we developed a sort of “best as of the moment “synthesis of agroforestry advances in the Philippines.

*Along the **Yangtze River** in friendlier times with China (90’s), together with Dr. Romy Del Castillo Philippine pioneer on agroforestry education*

Ideas that inspired us (late 80’s early 90’s)

Ecological agriculture and soil diversity applications in Indian agriculture
The landscape wide approaches to land rehabilitation in China
Take home principles from rational forest land management in the US of A
The role of community networks like the land care movement in Australia

My field notes

**We learned about ecological agriculture** in India as well as their diligent work on soil microbiology (e.g., nitrogen and phosphorous fixers etc.). The application of soil microbiology has opened the door to many nature-based alternatives to chemical agriculture systems. Fast forward to 21s century, a good example is the BIO- N formulation which could almost halve the cost of fertilization by Philippine rice farmers, it is based on a native bacterium from talahib grass that fixes Nitrogen in the air into useful forms for the farm application.

Interaction with local farmers and co learners in Tamil Nadu India

This was the time after the **Bhopal India nuclear incident.**

**China in the 90′**s was in the midst of an experiment in capitalism (under Teng Hsiao Ping, now Deng Xiao Ping). I am glad I had a quick glimpse of the transition process during our interaction with the R&D community on agroforestry.

Fast forward 2012, with family, I revisit China to tackle part of the Great Wall, At this time the country was reaping from the earlier opening up in the 90s. But the countryside already has to experience modern forms of land degradation – agri chemical pollution. Nanjing, China

**The take home principles** (not the form) of forest land use planning were first learned by (me, a non-forester) of all places. in the forest zones of the New York state. Great admiration for the US Forest Service.

At this time, I was impressed by **the potential power** of local multi stakeholder networks to address land degradation issues. We thus shared the Philippine experience in the NRM sector to others.

**Western Australia’ raw beauty** (including its plant kingdom as displayed in the Perth) caught our full attention

Insights

I had the chance to visit China in the early 90s in the very early days of capitalism. I would say that we should have studied Chinese history more than US history in school.
India’s pioneering R & D on bio fertilizers and on soil microbial diversity offers continuing benefits to make agriculture more ecologically cool.
The American colonial government set 18% slope to divide forest lands from agricultural lands – a source of many land management problems today. As if to compensate, their work on forest land management and zoning in helping us in the local forest land use planning processes
The 1st phase of Australia’s bottoms up LANDCARE program seems to have less than stellar success because it didn’t consider the reciprocal top-down approach. It does provide many learnings to these centuries problems about sustaining networks of actions in NRM and agriculture

1.2 COOL LESSONS FROM OLD SOCIETIES AND NEW (late 80’s early 90’s)

Ideas that inspired us (late 80’s early 90’s)

Insights

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