Earlier research in animals had raised fears that soy foods might cause a recurrence of the cancer because soy can act like estrogen.  A new study of women finds just the opposite.

//

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

In the chapter on “Health, Nutrition and Cognitive Processing“ of Helen Abadzi’s Efficient Learning for the Poor:  Insights from the Frontier of Cognitive Neuroscience, the issue of malnutrition looms large on each child’s early brain development and his ability to make choices in life. In the Philippines, more than 6 million children are reportedly malnourished, more than 4 million of those are of school age.

[You may also check out the companion articles, "Renewed Commitment to End Hunger" and, on a positive note, "Some nations successful in global hunger fight: FAO."]

By Stan Okenwa
17 November 2009

Amid global concern over food insecurity situation, which continues to impose serious threat for humanity, the world leaders have designed a summit to stem the tide of the insecurity. With food prices remaining stubbornly high in developing countries, the number of people suffering from hunger has been growing relentlessly in recent years.

The global economic crisis is aggravating the situation by affecting jobs and deepening poverty. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that the number of hungry people could increase by more than 100 million in 2009 and will surpass the one billion mark.

Director-General, FAO, Jacques Diouf has proposed a World Summit on Food Security to agree on key actions to tackle the crisis. “The silent hunger crisis affecting one sixth of all of humanity poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world”, he stated.

Poor countries need the development, economic and policy tools required to boost their agricultural production and productivity. Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries, a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome hunger and poverty and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth.

The gravity of the current food crisis is the result of 20 years of under-investment in agriculture and neglect of the sector. Directly or indirectly, agriculture provides the livelihood for 70 percent of the world’s poor.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “Food security exists, when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. This, it adds, involves the following conditions: adequate food supply, availability, stability of supply without fluctuations or shortages from season to season or from year to year; accessibility to food or affordability and quality and safety of food.

According to the FAO, around 923 million people worldwide were chronically hungry due to extreme poverty in 2007 while some two billion more intermittently lack food security as a result of varying degrees of poverty.

Recent food price increases have led to violent protests in Latin America, Africa and Asia, demonstrating the immediate impact the rise in basic commodity prices has had on the world’s poorest populations. In spring 2008, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia agreed in principle to form a rice price-fixing body, the Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC), amid soaring costs of basic grain. Such a food cartel, to be set up by 2012, would be similar to the oil cartel OPEC.

Developing countries which are net importers of food have been hit hardest by the hike in food prices , while net food exporting countries are making large profits. However, in the long term, rising food prices could help rural communities in some developing countries to escape poverty, increasing farmers’ income.

Higher agricultural prices could increase public and private investments to programmes that improve productivity and infrastructure and spread production to marginal land. This in turn might stop increasing urbanization, as higher wages and increased labour demand would incite people to stay in rural areas.

Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was initially created to support production and overcome food shortages induced by the Second World War. But it lead to overproduction and exported food surpluses to world markets, which in turn meant that developing countries faced unfair competition.

Some are richer in protein, others in essential fatty acids. There are pros and cons to all.

By Elena Conis >>>Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2009

Full-fat, low-fat or skim? Used to be, there weren’t many choices to make over what to pour on your cereal. But the number of alternatives to cow’s milk — soy, goat’s, hemp milk, more — has steadily grown.Each has its fans: those who swear by goat’s milk’s creamy texture or who love almond milk’s subtle, nutty flavor. But when it comes to nutrition, there’s no clear winner.

Graphic: What’s in your milk

Cow’s milk is a good source of protein but can be high in saturated fats. Hemp milk offers little protein but is rich in certain essential fatty acids. For some, an allergy is the main concern when choosing milk. For others, digestibility drives the decision. “There are dozens of differences in all of these milks,” says Alexandra Kazaks, professor of nutrition at Bastyr University in Kenmore, Wash.

Here’s a look at the nutritional pros and cons of standards and newcomers in the dairy case.

Cow’s milk

Whole cow’s milk packs 150 calories per cup, and about half of those calories come from fat. (See the related chart for a nutritional breakdown of all these different milks.) The 8 grams of fat in a cup of whole milk includes 5 grams of saturated fat, which can raise blood cholesterol. The American Heart Assn. recommends limiting saturated fat intake to 7% or less of daily calories: An adult consuming 1,800 calories per day would get more than one-third of that in an 8-ounce glass of whole milk.

Skim and reduced-fat milks provide the same amount of protein without the high levels of saturated fats or the cholesterol whole milk also contains. They also retain all of the calcium found in whole milk — up to 300 milligrams, about one-third of the recommended daily intake. According to the Institute of Medicine, adults require between 1,000 and 1,300 milligrams of calcium a day for optimum bone strength. And cow’s milk has long been promoted by nutritionists and dietitians as a good source of this important mineral, as well as the vitamin D needed to absorb the mineral.

But “there’s a fair amount of controversy in that whole area,” says Larry Kushi, associate director for epidemiology in the division of research at Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland. The issue is just how important calcium — and milk as a source of calcium — truly is for bone health.

Scientists increasingly began to question the relationship after several studies, including two unusually large ones, failed to find evidence linking increased milk consumption to a decreased risk of fractures, a sign of bone health.

A 12-year study of more than 77,000 women, conducted by Harvard researchers and published in 1997, found that women who drank two glasses of milk a day had roughly the same risk of hip or forearm fractures as women who drank one glass or less per week. A 2003 investigation of the same population found that although vitamin D intake reduced the risk of hip fractures in post-menopausal women, high calcium and milk intake did not.

The science on the relationship between cow’s milk and cancer is also somewhat murky, and researchers are working to clarify this. Population studies have produced good evidence that increased dairy consumption, including that of milk, may decrease the risk of colorectal cancer. But studies also suggest that the risk of prostate cancer may increase with increasing milk consumption.

The evidence for female cancers — including breast, ovarian and endometrial cancers — is more mixed. Studies conducted several decades ago were less likely to demonstrate a link between dairy consumption and female cancers than more recent ones, and some nutrition experts think this difference may be linked to industrial practices that have increased the levels of the hormone estrogen in cow’s milk.

Then there’s the issue of milk allergy, an immune-system reaction to any of the several types of casein, whey or other proteins in milk. About 2.5% of children develop cow’s milk allergies in their first year, according to the National Institutes of Health, and 80% outgrow it in adulthood.

Other individuals suffer from lactose intolerance, the inability to digest the dominant sugar found in milk. The intolerance (which causes gas, bloating and diarrhea) stems from a lack of lactase, the enzyme required to break down the milk sugar lactose. It is far more common than milk allergy. “Most of the world’s population can’t digest milk,” says Dr. Scott Sicherer, professor of pediatrics at the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and co-author of the 2009 book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Dairy-Free Eating.” “Our bodies are not made to drink this stuff.”

Goat’s milk

The popularity in the U.S. of cow’s milk makes us a bit of an anomaly: Globally, goat’s milk is a far more popular drink.

But Americans may be getting a taste for it. Tracy Darrimon, director of marketing for Turlock, Calif.-based Meyenberg Goat Milk Products, the top producers of commercially available goat milk in the U.S., says that over the last four years the company has increased production more than 30% to keep up with demand.

Consumers choose goat’s milk because they perceive it as less allergenic, easier to digest and more healthful all round than cow’s milk. Some of those perceptions may be wrong. Since goat’s milk, like cow’s milk, is derived from mammals, “It’s much more likely to have similar effects on long-term health,” Kaiser’s Kushi says.

Consumers looking to avoid saturated fat and cholesterol, for instance, may do well to eschew whole goat’s milk: It has more saturated fat than cow’s milk and similar levels of cholesterol and is higher in calories and total fat. And goat’s milk, like cow’s milk, contains lactose. Though the levels can be slightly lower than those in cow’s milk, “It’s not enough to really make a difference if someone has lactose intolerance,” Bastyr’s Kazaks says.

In Europe, where goat’s milk consumption is far more common than in the U.S., a few studies have suggested that goat’s milk is less likely to cause allergies than cow’s milk. But Ohio allergist Dr. Julie McNairn, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, doubts that this is true. She says the proteins triggering allergy to cow’s milk are very similar to those found in goat’s milk.

More than 90% of the time, people allergic to cow’s milk are allergic to goat’s milk, Sicherer adds: “If someone’s allergic to cow’s milk, I tell them to stay away from mammalian milks.”

Soy milk

Because soy milk is made from a plant, it contains no cholesterol and negligible amounts of saturated fat: just half a gram per cup.

Compared with whole cow’s or goat’s milk, it is lower in calories too, but a glass still provides the same levels of key nutrients present in those milks, including calcium, protein, vitamin A, vitamin D and potassium. That’s partly because soybeans contain calcium, protein and potassium. But soy milk is also fortified to be nutritionally comparable to cow’s milk.

Soy milk’s lack of cholesterol and low levels of saturated and total fat have made it a popular choice for people looking to improve their heart health, says Stacey Krawczyk, a research dietitian with the National Soybean Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For the last 10 years, soy foods have been allowed to bear the FDA-approved claim that a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet containing 25 grams of soy protein per day may reduce the risk of heart disease.

Soy milk may have another benefit: In recent decades, several large population studies have suggested consuming soy may be linked to a lower risk of cancer, including prostate, colorectal and breast cancer.

But the relationship between soy milk consumption and cancer remains unclear — largely because most studies have focused on populations, such as those in Asia, that consume whole soy products, such as tofu, tempeh and edamame, as a large part of their diet. Studies on the general U.S. and European populations have not been able to replicate the findings, in part because soy consumption levels here are much lower, Kushi says.

This protective effect against cancer, if there is one, is thought to be at least partly due to estrogen-like compounds in soy that may compete with human estrogen in the body, hindering it from prompting the cell proliferation that can trigger cancer. But the link between soy consumption and cancer may invert in women after menopause, when natural estrogen levels plummet. “The evidence is still unclear,” Kushi says.

Soy can be a good dairy alternative for most people with allergies to cow’s milk. Soy allergies affect 0.4% of children — more common than most food allergies but far less common than ones to milk. Soy milk allergy in children is often outgrown. And though people allergic to cow’s milk are often likely to have another food allergy, the differences in the two milks’ proteins means an allergy to one doesn’t automatically translate into an allergy to the other, McNairn says.

Soy milk also lacks lactose, so it’s easier for people with lactose intolerance to digest it.

A downside? Because soybeans have an inherently bitter taste, soy milk is often heavily processed — and sweetened — to mask that flavor, says Kantha Shelke, a food chemist with the Chicago-based food-science think tank Corvus Blue. Sweeteners are often high on the list of ingredients in soy milks, adding sugar and calories that consumers might not be aware of. Still, with about 5 grams of sugar per cup, even the more sugary soy milks contain fewer sugars than the 12 grams per cup in cow’s milk. (Soy milks labeled “unsweetened” contain about 1 gram.)

Soy milk presents its own digestibility challenges, Kazaks says. The milk contains high levels of oligosaccharides, carbohydrates that are hard for the body to break down. “It can really cause a lot of gas in some people,” she says.

Almond milk

“With almond milk, it’s more about what you don’t get” than what you do, says Sam Cunningham, an independent food scientist and consultant specializing in nuts, who helped develop almond milk for Sacramento-based Blue Diamond Growers as an employee of the almond processor in the 1990s.

Like soy milk, almond milk contains zero cholesterol. It’s free of saturated fats, so it’s a healthful option for people with, or at risk for, heart disease. It doesn’t contain lactose, so it’s an option for people with lactose intolerance. And it’s even lower in calories and total fat than soy milk: a glass contains just 60 calories and 2.5 grams of fat to soy milk’s 100 calories and 4 fat grams.

But although almonds, among nuts, are a good source of calcium and protein, almond milk’s calcium and protein levels don’t compare to the levels in cow’s, goat’s or soy milks. A glass of almond milk provides just 1 gram of protein. Some brands provide up to 20% of the daily recommended calcium intake (about 10% less than the other milks), but other brands provide none.

Almonds are also a good source of iron, riboflavin, vitamin E and some essential fatty acids. A cup of the ground-up nuts contains more than 11 grams of omega-6 fats (but very few omega-3s).

In recent years, several studies have hinted at a link between nut consumption and lower blood cholesterol and a reduced risk of heart disease. Since 2003, the Food and Drug Administration has allowed almonds (and other nuts) to bear the claim that eating 1.5 ounces of nuts daily, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce risk of heart disease.

Still, nuts are one thing — almond milk is another. The fraction of almond milk that’s actually comprised of finely blended almonds varies between products and can be minimal, Kazaks says. In many commercially available almond milks, almonds are the second or third ingredient, after water and sweeteners. (The same is true for many soy milks as well.) So despite the high vitamin E and omega-6 content of almonds, a glass of almond milk may contain none of the vitamin and just 300 to 600 milligrams of the omega-6s.

Almond milk is a fine alternative for people allergic to cow’s and soy milks, Jaffe’s Sicherer says, but almonds pose their own allergenicity hazards. Allergies to tree nuts, including almonds, are among the top allergies in the population, affecting 0.2% of children. And although cow’s and soy milk allergies are often outgrown, nut allergies are more likely to persist.

Rice milk

Like almond milk, rice milk’s main advantages are what it doesn’t contain. It is free of cholesterol and saturated fat. It doesn’t contain lactose. Allergies to rice are rare.

In fact, rice milk manufacturers commonly promote their product as safe for people with any of a number of allergies or intolerances — including cow’s milk, soy and nut allergies, as well as lactose and gluten intolerance. (Gluten, found in wheat and other cereal grains, is not present in any of the milks mentioned here.)

Rice milk, like soy and almond milk, is formulated to contain levels of calcium, vitamin A and vitamin D similar to (albeit lower than) those in cow’s milk. But it is not a good source of protein, with just 0.67 grams per serving, and often contains more calories than almond or soy milk: about 113 calories per cup. Its vitamin E levels exceed that of cow’s, goat’s and soy milk but don’t compare with that of some almond milks.

One more thing rice milk doesn’t have: flavor in need of masking with sweeteners. “It’s a very mild-flavored product,” Corvus Blue’s Shelke says.

Hemp milk

Among plant-based milks, hemp milk is unique, and not just because the cannabis plant it’s made from poses legal challenges for farmers.

A glass of hemp milk contains the same number of calories as soy milk, one-third to one-half of the protein, but 50% more fat: 5 to 6 grams. However, most of the fats in hemp milk are omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids, key for nervous system function and healthy skin and hair. Certain omega-3 and omega-6 fats also appear to reduce inflammation and lower blood lipid levels.

Plant oils typically have an excess of omega-6 fats relative to omega-3s — and the hemp seed is no exception. A cup of hemp milk (which is made from the “nut” of the hemp seed but can also contain some of the hull) often provides about 1 gram of omega-3s and 3 to 4 grams of omega-6s. Still, that level of omega-3s is high for plants, making hemp milk a useful source of them — especially given that American diets typically provide too few omega-3 fats and too many omega-6s.

In fact, some nutrition experts recommend a dietary ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s of between 1:1 and 1:3, a ratio that occurs naturally in hemp milk.

But the story is more complicated than that. It is unclear whether the predominant omega-3 fat in hemp, alpha linolenic acid (ALA), has the same heart-health benefits of those found abundantly in fish oils (known as EPA and DHA for short), says William Harris, director of the Cardiovascular Health Research Center at the University of South Dakota.

Like soy milk, hemp milk is low in saturated fat and cholesterol-free. It’s also free of lactose, and allergies to hemp are rare. Christina Volgyesi, vice president of marketing for Portland, Ore.-based Living Harvest Foods, which makes hemp milk, says the milk is made from different cannabis varieties than those used to produce marijuana, and contains none of the mind-altering active ingredient THC.

Hemp milk contains many of the nutrients found in cow’s milk (including calcium, vitamin A and vitamin D) since it’s fortified. In fact, some brands provide 40% to 50% of the daily recommended allowance of calcium, as compared with the 30% found in cow’s milk.

Nutritionally, hemp seeds are similar to flax seeds, which have become increasingly popular sources of essential fatty acids in recent years. But not all seeds rich in the fats lend themselves to a palatable milk alternative.

“Flax milk would probably be dark brown,” Shelke says. “We are probably not prepared to drink something dark brown in color.”

Unless, of course, it’s chocolate milk — be it of cow’s, goat’s, soy, almond, rice or even hemp.

MANILA, Philippines — (UPDATE) The Philippines is testing dairy imports from China and will slap a ban on these if found contaminated with an industrial chemical that had sickened nearly 53,000 Chinese children.

“We will have to recall all these products if there is evidence they contain melamine,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque said Monday.

Melamine, normally used in making plastics, was first found in infant milk formula in Chinese markets but has since been detected in a range of products with dairy ingredients both in China and abroad.

Manila’s Bureau of Food and Drugs has confirmed that 15 China-made milk products were being sold in the Philippines.

BFAD is currently doing random testing of “made in China” milk products across the country, and its regional offices have started collecting samples of two Chinese liquid milk products confirmed to be in the Philippine market, BFAD Director Leticia Gutierrez said Monday.

“There are two liquid milk products, Yili and Mengniu, that we’ve confirmed to be distributed here. We’ve instructed our regional inspectors to collect samples so we can test them in our laboratory for the presence of melamine,” Gutierrez told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) when reached by phone Monday.

Yili dairy, maker of a milk product that downed a three-year-old girl from Hong Kong, is among 22 Chinese producers whose baby formula was found to contain melamine. Their products were recently recalled on orders of the Chinese Health Ministry.

Gutierrez said 13 other Chinese milk brands would later be tested for melamine traces as she gave assurances that BFAD has laboratory equipment capable of detecting the dangerous substance in milk products.

Asked whether BFAD has determined the scope of distribution of Chinese milk brands in the country, Gutierrez said: “Chances are, we can determine the distribution through the importers. We can ask the help of importers to determine that.”

Powder and liquid milk tainted with melamine, a nitrogen-rich chemical used in the production of plastic products, have downed close to 53,000 children in China and its territory Hong Kong over the past few weeks.

Said to damage kidneys, the substance could be more dangerous in cases of child ingestion.

After the testing, the bureau will come up with a list of milk products that are deemed unsafe, hopefully within the week, Gutierrez said.

“We’ll be sharing the results [of the tests] with the public as soon as we have collected enough data,” she said.

BFAD has confirmed that China’s Sanlu Group, blamed for most of the poisoning cases, does not export its goods to the Philippines.

“As far as the Sanlu milk products are concerned, we do not have an importer licensed to import them. They’re not supposed to be in the market,” Gutierrez told Reuters.

Sanlu said two weeks ago, it was reported that babies developed kidney stones and other complications after drinking the tainted milk. But the company failed to publicly disclose the problem throughout August when Beijing hosted the Olympic Games, officials said.

Food giant Nestle Philippines gave assurances its products are safe, following reports the Hong Kong’s food safety body had found melamine in a Nestle Dairy Farm pure milk sample from northeastern China.

“Nestle Philippines Incorporated assures consumers that its milk products are safe for consumption,” Sandra Puno, Nestle Philippines director of communication, said in a statement Monday.

She said Nestle Philippines imports its dairy not from China but from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States.

“Nestle milk products are manufactured under high quality control standards and meet all regulatory standards before they are released to the local market,” she said.

Nestle Philippines is the manufacturer of Nido, Bear Brand, Neslac, Nestogen, and Nesvita.

Trade Undersecretary Zenaida Maglaya warned consumers against buying milk products without labels amid reports that there might be Chinese milk products smuggled into the country that were finding their way into small bakeshops.

A host of countries — Bangladesh, Brunei, Burundi, Japan, Gabon, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and Tanzania — have barred Chinese milk products or taken some other form of action to curb consumption.

The scandal stems from the practice of adding melamine to watered-down milk to give it the appearance of higher protein levels.

It first came to light two weeks ago in state-controlled media, but some press reports say the scam had been going on for years.

Shigeru Omi, Western Pacific director of the UN World Health Organization, raised concerns the health risks were not reported earlier by China.

He told a press conference in Manila that “it seems people already knew of this problem for some time and did not share this information.”

New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, which has a joint venture with the Sanlu Group, the first company identified in the scandal, said it knew for weeks and had been pushing for a recall.

China has been hit by a wave of embarrassing scandals in recent years over dangerous products including food, drugs and toys, spoiling its manufacturing reputation.

Last year, melamine was found in pet food containing Chinese ingredients that killed cats and dogs in the United States.

The sum total of soya bean oil cake/meal imports, per the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics, was 1,433,070 metric tons (at $384,230,000 CIF) in 2005, 1,356,230 metric tons (at $317,910,000 CIF) in 2006, and 1,322,490,000 metric tons (at $392,020,000 CIF) in 2007. According to “ADOPTION OF SOYBEAN IN LUPAO, NUEVA ECIJA“, a research report on soybean farming in Lupao under the auspices of the UN/ENCAP CGPRT (coarse grain, pulses, roots and tuber crops) Centre, the Philippines launched a program in 1983 to  offset rising soybean meal imports. The target was to expand the acreage planted to soybean from 8,590 hectares in 1983 to 130,000 hectares by 1986-1987 to achieve approximately 50% self-sufficiency in soybean.  Needless to say, the goals were not achieved for a number of reasons. In the pilot at Lupao, some of the reasons are inadequate know-how of the farmers regarding soybean cultivation, low yields attributed to labor, operating capital and irrigation, occurence of disease and pests, and the delivery of services by support agencies which supply chemicals and seed was not always timely.

Spurred by the growing soybean imports worth $362.1 million in 2003, the Department of Agriculture launched in that same year the roadmap to develop the soybean industry–with a more modest goal this time, namely, increase soybean production areas from less than 1,000 hectares to 30,000 hectares in the next three years.  It is safe to say that this later effort met with the same fate as the earlier one because when I checked the latest agricultural production data at the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics, soybean is not mentioned anywhere. Not a blip, except on the agricultural imports side where soya bean oil cake/meal ranks as one of the Top 4 in volume and in value.

That’s why the SOYBEAN INITIATIVE to be undertaken by the PHILIPPINE SOYBEAN AUTHORITY proposed to be under the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) Research, Development and Extension (uplb.edu.ph/rde) will have a built-in fail-safe infrastructure that will ensure success this time around. UPLB’s Research, Development and Extension will exploit the healthful dietary effects of soybean food consumption as one of the primary objectives to get Filipinos in general to embrace high-protein soybean food products as a staple food for their proper physical and mental development. Starting from pilot introductions, thence into a nationwide program, UPLB/RDE will demonstrate the proper cultivation of soybean, pest and disease management, use of high-yield varieties, etc., to increase the likelihood of soybean farmers deriving cash income from their toils to alleviate their socio-economic situation.

And don’t forget: the Philippine Soybean Authority under this proposed setup will stay away from the crippling effects of political corruption!  Ah, I feel almost giddy when I think about this. How can we possibly fail under these circumstances?

It is a foregone conclusion that there is a market awaiting the output of future local soybean farmers.  But how else are we going to entice farmers to cultivate soybeans as an alternative and profitable crop right away and, a very important consideration, where are they going to get financing?

On May 9, 2008, Carla Gomez of the Visayan Bureau of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, wrote an article that said the government had P80 billion available for microfinance programs this year and is in need of partners for its dispersal.  Microfinance loans are made available through local organizations and rural banks.

Last year President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo designated Cerge Remonde as the oversight official for micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) development.  On a positive note, Remonde says the repayment rate of microfinance loans has been impressive–up to 98 percent.  To make the program more attractive, the President has reportedly ordered interest rates lowered from 12% to 10%.

In a span of 4 years from 2004 to 2008, a total of P213.77 billion was released to 3.76 million active microfinance clients and small and medium enterprise (SME) accounts generating about 2.18 million new jobs. “”We are generating jobs and creating products that are globally competitive,” Rimonde said. “In time we hope to export more of these products so that we can keep more of our workers here at home.” [I believe Rimonde was referring to the OFW, which is another story.]

In her 2008 State of the Nation Address, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said:  “In microfinance, loans have reached P102 billion or 30 times more than the P3 billion we started with in 2001, with a 98% repayment record, congratulations! Major lenders include the Land Bank with P69 billion, the Peoples’ Credit and Finance Corporation P8 billion, the National Livelihood Support Fund P3 billion, DBP P1 billion and the DSWD’s SEA-K P800 million…”

Aside from the government microfinancing program, there are other organizations offering similar microfinancing services.  Among them are TSPI Development Corporation and the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD).

TSPI, (formerly Tulay sa Pag-unlad, Inc.), is a non-stock, non-profit, Christian-oriented organization, which provides the poor with opportunities to lead self-sufficient, responsible and dignified lives. It offers a broad range of services, in the area of microfinance and capability building support, designed to promote the holistic development of micro and small entrepreneurs.

CARD, an innovative leader in the microfinance industry, believes that financial support is not enough to entirely eradicate the poverty situation in the Philippines. Its in-house researches have shown that poor people need an outlet for their produce, a well-made structure that they can call their home, proper education for their children and assistance to smooth their consumption spending and build more assets.

In other words, there’s an existing financing infrastructure that would support farmers interested in soybean farming. With the Philippine Soybean Authority (under the University of the Philippines Los Baños) training interested farmers in all facets of soybean farming and certifying to their training with a minimum of politics and corrupt practices, farmers’ applications for microfinancing of their soybean ventures should be further expedited.

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There simply is no better place to launch the Philippine Soybean Initiative than UPLB’s Research, Development and Extension which, on February 1996, set the following “thrusts” to be pursued:

Research

• Sustainable productivity and efficient resource use premised on ecological balance;
• Optimal rural and urban development;
• Appropriate technologies for processing industries;
• Basic research and cutting-edge technologies; and
• Indigenous knowledge systems and Philippine culture.

Extension

• Develop or test extension policies, models and approaches towards wider application;
• Respond to development issues, problems, changing needs and demands of its clientele;
• Disseminate and apply results of research and other relevant information and social technologies towards addressing issues and problems from the environment; and
• Contribute towards improving the quality of life of the people through improvement of agricultural production, better nutrition and health, and moral upliftment.

With its several centers of excellence, UPLB shares its institutional resources with the country’s state colleges and universities (SUCs), thereby facilitating the dispersion of new technology or research results, especially to those who need it.

Bottomline:  There is ABSOLUTELY no need to reinvent the wheel.

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This level of idealism, I thought, would be perpetuated by the constant turnover of senior and graduate students chosen for each academic year to participate in the decision-making processes at all levels of the Philippine Soybean Authority (in fulfillment of their practicum course), making it less susceptible to the corrupt practices that infest and paralyze government which ultimately render it difficult to realize well-intentioned goals.

The present UPLB Research, Development and Extension unit of the university would therefore be the ideal arm to take the expanded role of organizing, directing, managing, and controlling the Philippine Soybean Authority.  In the process, I foresee this working and organization model as a pioneering effort in minimizing, or perhaps, eradicating the corruption in government.

It’s worth a try, for our sake.

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The salutary effect of this nitrogen fixation in the soil, of course, is the reduction of capital outlays otherwise intended for the purchase of increasingly expensive commercial fertilizers.  This is beneficial as well to other crops, like rice or corn, when cultivated in rotation with soybeans. While we don’t have any hard figures on the reduction in expenses for fertilizer on account of the cultivation of nodulating soybeans, the phenomenon has to put a dent on our import of crude and manufactured fertilizers which, in 2006, was about 2 million metric tons valued at $305 million according to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics.

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