Saturday, February 20, 2010

Bloggers' Multi-crop Multi-livestock Farm

How may we bloggers switch to action mode in our anti-poverty war? We use two basic tactics: conventional and guerilla. The conventional way is to persuade people worldwide to lobby their governments into passing laws that lend capital to thousand-employee groups in the 3rd World, for use in setting up new joint venture industries that will employ the poor.

The guerilla way is to set up model 3rd World business projects. The projects must be so profitable that local employee groups and their allies develop a strong desire to replicate them. Since most 3rd World employees have little savings, they will tend to adopt our conventional tactics as previously described.

Okay, now let’s go guerilla. First model project is a multi-crop multi-livestock farm with managed forest in the Philippines. Several hundred thousand of us bloggers and our friends contribute a few dollars each over some months to raise the funds for our farm. We use part of capital to hire a team of Philippine consultant experts on agriculture, animal husbandry, meat processing and forestry. Our farm sites are nearly denuded upland plots that total 500-hectares, all leased from state. An upland spring and stream net is first site requirement to insure year-round water supply. The watershed nets are first to be heavily reforested to enlarge water supply volumes.

Ninety hectares of rolling hills on the mountain base go to production of upland rice, corn, sweet sorghum, vegetables, root crops and leguminous grasses. Ten hectares go to fenced feedlots for goats and pigs by the hundred, and range chicken, ducks, rabbits and quail by the thousand. A few score turkey, cattle and sheep complete the livestock mix. Single-story buildings are located at the main feedlot corners to house workers’ quarters, a meat-processing facility, hand tractor and farm tools sheds, brown sugar production facility, grain storage barns, and offices with guest rooms and seminar halls. The buildings double as guard and dog team posts against night rustlers.

Four-hundred hectares
of denuded high-slope plots get reforested with fruit trees, forage trees, hardwoods, softwoods, bamboo, rattan, various palms and other tropical forest plants. The product and livestock mixes have a single purpose: earn good short-term income while awaiting forest harvests that begin only after 2-3 years.

How do we make livestock-raising profitable? Several ways: (1) Ground corn, sprouted sorghum grains and rice mill wastes combine with sorghum juice, high-protein forest tree leaves, lime (calcium source), vitamin-mineral premix and salt to compose an organic feed mix that is just 20% of commercial livestock feeds’ prices. (2) Upland rice cropping brings irrigation costs down by 70% compared with lowland rice. (3) Choice of mixed-breed chicken, pigs and goats (all disease-resistant) saves on veterinary and disease-related costs. Such mixed-breed livestock also require no expensive housing. The animals are quite happy feeding and roaming around in alternate feedlots with mere sheds for shelter. Animal wastes on a used (post-transfer) feedlot are simply covered with a soil/ash/char mix on the spot for hygienic drying and later shoveling and piling in compost pits. Savings in waste treatment are tremendous. (4) Use of organic pesticides saves 60% on pest control costs. (5) Use of foliar fertilizer and compost instead of commercial soil-applied fertilizer saves 40% on plant food costs. (6) The farm uses a crops dryer fueled by rice hull and corn cobs and other farm wastes. (7) The farm converts sweet sorghum juice into brown sugar for sale to makers of sweets. The procedure is traditional and costs very little. (8) The farm’s strip-cropping operations with cost-saving hand-tractor cultivation ensures endless production of livestock feed for continuing sales of assorted meat products. Labor is maximized with no idle time between strip plantings and harvests. Strip-cropping also ensures regular salaries to workers. Trained workers stay with the farm for good. The farm avoids further recruitment and training costs. (9) The farm slaughters, cuts, pre-cooks, flavors (depending on what’s to be sold), and freezes its livestock harvests. Meat products, rice, root crops and vegetables get retailed via urban food booth operators and the farm’s delivery teams all recruited from the jobless of city slums. No middlemen means maximum profit margins. Additionally, scores of slum families earn regular income with low-cost food as incentive.

After 2-3 years, profits further shoot up thru our farm’s managed forest operations. Reason: forest products require very low operational costs yet their prices are highest everywhere. Examples: (1) orchids and ornamental plants grown under forest canopies; (2) Black pepper (3) Cashew, mangoes, fruity palms, cacao (for chocolate), avocadoes, mangosteen, longkan, rambutan, jack fruit, star apple, assorted berries, chico, soursop, root crops for sweets, etc. (4) Honey; (5) Various types of mushrooms (6) Softwoods, hardwoods, bamboo and rattan; (7) Fibers for paper; (8) Leaves and saps for medicinal preparations.

All these promise dividends to investors that are way above average corporate returns. Most profits get recycled to set up more farm modules with help from more blogger contributors and investors attracted by our high dividend rates. But what’s most satisfying are the social effects. Our farms’ high profits should encourage the 30 million-strong Philippine employee mass to copy our model. Lacking capital, they will pressure State to pass a law that lends capital to thousand-employee groups that set up reforestation-related agribusinesses. The law should require foreign joint venture partners so as to quadruple local investments thru equipment loans. Pacific Rim restaurant chains and meat products sub-contractors are priority partners, for they contribute capital, equipment and export markets as well.

A good law exists forever, so our ‘loans for mass entrepreneurship’ law keeps creating large agribusinesses, supplier industries and millions of jobs each year, for all eternity. Translation: all local poor (there are over 50 million of them) eventually get employed in regular jobs. Additionally, fortunes in stock shares and corporate dividends flow among local employee masses (who currently earn just $200-$500 monthly). Eighteen million hectares of currently bald Philippine uplands eventually transform into forests that absorb tons of greenhouse gases every second. As the profit-making Philippine model gets copied all over the tropics, billions of poor get employed in all manner of agribusinesses even as global warming gets tamed. Now that's blogger power forever!

Friday, February 19, 2010

Bloggers' Ethanol Distillery With Sweet Sorghum Plantation

They say bloggers are all discussions and no action. Well, they can all be wrong. We bloggers can switch to anti-poverty action mode, guerilla style right now. How? First we plan to create a model sweet sorghum plantation with ethanol distillery in the Philippines. A million or so bloggers and their friends contributing $10-up each over a few months capitalizes both sorghum plantation and a 40,000 liters/day ethanol distillery. Total project cost is around $15 million. Hired consultant experts design the farm and distillery. Technology comes from India’s International Crop Research Institute for Sub-arid Tropics. Farm site is 1,000 hectares of denuded Philippine upland plots, all leased from State. The distillery rises on a company-purchased plot at a nearby town with power lines. Three-wheel tractors cultivate the land, creating contoured strips and plots. Reforested mini-dam nets, and concrete cisterns with pumps for raising water to mountain tops provide year-round irrigation. Worker teams plant sweet sorghum, feed the plants foliar fertilizer, prepare and apply compost, and spray organic pesticides. Strip cropping assures daily harvests and feeding of stalks to the distillery. Contract growing of sweet sorghum to local farmers raises harvests to several thousand-hectare volumes.

The 40,000 liters/day distillery should spout out ethanol which when sold profits at an astonishing 80% of sales! The stratospheric profit rate is based on Brazilian experience using sugar cane as feedstock, and lower gasoline prices in early 2000s . Sweet sorghum as feedstock promises even higher profit rates due to several factors: (1) Sweet sorghum can be ratooned (cut at base) for up to three crops a year without replanting, versus just one crop per year for sugar cane; (2) Sweet sorghum needs two-thirds less water than sugar cane; (3) Sweet sorghum has higher brix (sweetness) content than sugar cane; (4) Sweet sorghum can be grown in several types of soil, is drought-resistant, and can even withstand heavy rain or flash floods; (5) More sweet sorghum plants grow per hectare compared to sugar cane; (6) Brazilian style sugarcane planting require enormous amounts of expensive soil-applied commercial fertilizer and pesticides. Our sorghum plantations save up to 60% in plant food costs thru low-cost foliar and compost fertilization. Highly-effective organic pesticides developed locally saves up to 70% in pesticides.

Given these factors, our ethanol distillery can be expected to earn seven-figure clean profit weekly, peso basis. We have to reward blogger contributors and investors with dividends that are way above average stock market returns to encourage local copies of our profit-making model. The rest of profit goes towards construction of another distillery and plantation model in another place to transform habitual skeptics and cynics into believers. The target: spread the profit-making word among thirty million Filipino employees. Visions of ‘sideline income’ quadrupling salaries can drive the employee masses to pressure government into passing a law that lends capital to thousand-employee groups that plan on building sweet sorghum farms and distilleries, plus all manner of agribusinesses. A mere fourth of state budgets (some P140 billion yearly) can build scores of distilleries and plantations when leveraged by foreign investments. The law should require a 1st World joint venture partner for every group. Foreign joint venture partners quadruple local capital thru dollar investments and 20-year equipment loans. Locals get their farm machines and distillery equipment without investing more pesos. As in the 3rd World past, world anti-poverty development banks may grant the equipment loans at state guaranty. This time however, employee half-ownership of the giant projects ensures trillions of dollars worth of stock shares and dividends flooding the masses instead of bottling up among the few oligarchs and state officials. This time also, the mass-initiated loans get invested in productive enterprises that pay taxes at gargantuan scale, enough to repay new and decades-long state loans. State credit-worthiness rises to stratospheric levels, enabling Philippine regimes to keep borrowing for mass-initiated anti-poverty projects.

Since good laws are forever, the Philippine ‘mass projects financing law’ should keep creating distilleries, sweet sorghum plantations and all manner of agribusinesses for all time, with expansions all over the tropics. Billions of bottom poor get employed while employee masses quadruple their salaries thru ‘sideline dividends’ and ownership of shares paid for by their companies’ world-scale operations. The Philippine model copied by other 3rd World countries produces planet-size multi-benefits: Energy prices way down thru use of E75 fuel (75% ethanol, 25% gasoline). New jobs for bottom poor created in millions each year throughout the tropics, for all eternity. Denuded lands thick with greenery. Vehicle pollutants greatly reduced thru ethanol use. The disastrous effects of global warming toned down.

As one may see, blogging nets have great potential power to redeem the world’s poor while rebuilding the planet’s overused ecologies. Millions of e-talents with worldwide reach have the potential to guide world politicians towards creating economic and political democracy in the 3rd World. The grassroots should begin managing public resources (thru laws initiated by blogging nets) instead of perpetually depending on a few politicians to solve planet-scale problems.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Bloggers' Model Forest Resort

How may we anti-poverty bloggers begin to act on our ideals instead of perpetually blaming politicians for their failure to solve mass poverty especially in the 3rd World? One way for us: go guerilla tactics. Construct model agribusiness ventures for employee masses to copy. Here’s one among others: a model ‘forest resort city’ in the Philippines.

Our forested resort city starts with a million or so bloggers contributing $5-$10 each over a few months to accumulate capital. Some of the initial contributions hires a team of Philippine expert consultants on tropical forestry, construction of a mini-dam hydropower chain, construction of commercial buildings and condominiums, ‘unspoiled beachfront forest’ landscaping, adult sports facilities, kiddie rides, tropical forest animals biology and breeding, and commercial tourism. The experts choose a project site: 900 hectares of a denuded mountain and 100 hectares of beachfront low-slope land. The sites get leased from state.

At construction stage, worker teams reforest the entire upland plot, 60% to fruit trees. Other teams construct a mini-dam and hydroelectric chain along a net of heavily reforested streams on the upland lease. More teams construct a chain of swimming pools with ‘rocky’ falls, obstacle courses and airsoft ‘battlefields’ for adults, and fun rides for kids. A landscape architect makes sure all facility exteriors look ‘forested’ or hidden by ‘flowery cliffs.’ Construction teams build several ten-storey condominiums, all with ‘flowery-cliff’ facades that make them ‘disappear’ into the forest. A threatened animal species breeding facility provides the forest with tropical birds, mammals, and ruminants for binocular viewing along streams and ponds where feeding stations attract the colorful animals. Pacific Rim condo developers become joint venture partners for each condo building. While still on construction stage, management pre-sells condo space and uses proceeds to build more condos with more joint venture partners. Buyers are local inn and hotel operators, food chains, retailers, service companies, mall operators, short-course schools, spa chains, and 1st World families that need vacation sharing condos, condo units for hire to tourists, or retirement homes. Our blogging nets invite US boating groups to set up tour boat fleets, a marina and dive training facilities at the coast. All the while we advertise our ‘forest city’ all over the internet so it gets flooded with tourists from opening time. Wealthy blogger-investors are expected to form the tourist vanguard.

Of course our resort should earn millions of tourist dollars weekly during regular operations. Leasing and sale of condo spaces provides major profit. Rental of sports facilities provide more. Our managed forest yields assorted tropical fruits, juices, fruit cocktails, ice-cream ingredients, health drinks, mushrooms, honey, orchids, ornamentals, rattan and wood furniture, terrariums for sale, and fees from guided forest tours of waterfall picnic grounds. Our resort’s uniqueness as an ‘unspoiled forest’ with all manner of city amenities hidden inside, plus sports facilities, copious ‘natural’ swimming pools, clean beaches, island-hopping boat fleets, elevated gardens between ‘flowery cliff’ condos (to hide service vehicles), are sure to become a hit among tourists tired of ‘commercial-looking’ resorts with stark buildings. A good portion of the world’s yearly tourist horde is expected to stay for weeks or months or till death in our forest resort city. Legions of entrepreneurs looking for business opportunities should flock to our resort, where an endless flow of businessmen on vacation are all potential markets for all manner of goods, services and business proposals. Consequently, resort profits are expected to rise sky-high. We reward investors with dividends at rates way above average corporate returns to encourage more investors. Profits plus new investments should build another resort city in another Philippine province.

The social leverage however is the most satisfying. Our profit-making resorts should encourage thirty million Filipino employees to form thousand-member entrepreneurial groups that copy our resort formats. Low salaries push the employee masses to pressure government into passing a law that grants loans to thousand-employee groups that set up agribusinesses, including of course forest resorts. Consequently, the country’s 18 million hectares of currently denuded uplands convert not only into forest resorts but to multi-crop farms, fruit tree forests, forested mini hydropower chains and forest ranches that supply resort cities. The resorts get low-priced foods that attract more tourists. Sweet sorghum plantations and ethanol distilleries (derived from another blogger project model) provide cheap fuel to tour boats and motor home caravans that serve the resorts. Mini-hydropower chains supply the lowest-priced electricity in the Pacific Rim. All contribute towards ultra-low tour prices that attract increasingly larger portions of the world’s 150 million-strong yearly tourist flood. A tourist spends an average $1,000 per stay of several days, so wealth from tourism inundates employee masses who own the agribusinesses. Since a good law is forever, the ‘loans for mass entrepreneurship’ law keeps creating thousands of agribusinesses and related companies year after year, for all eternity. As the profit motive creates copycats of the Philippine model all over the 3rd World’s coastal tropics, billions of jobs get created for bottom poor. Fortunes in stock shares and dividends flood tropical economies’ employee masses. The bonus is just as planet-scale: new tropics-wide forests absorbing millions of tons of greenhouse gases every second, thereby putting a brake on global warming. Our vanguard blogger army becomes a planet-scale redeemer.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Bloggers' Mini Hydropower Chains

How may we bloggers win the anti-poverty war? One way: we use guerilla tactics thru business modeling. We set up an agri-business in the 3rd World that is so profitable that all local employee groups will copy it, thereby creating millions of jobs for bottom poor. Example: a model chain of mini-dams with hydropower plants and managed forest in the Philippines. The Philippines has the second highest-priced electricity in the Pacific Rim. Yet the country is 60% mountains that average 1,500 meters in height. Along the uplands form thousands of stream nets that feed 130 lowland rivers. The mountains are 85% denuded, so most upland waters come only during the 6-month rainy season. Reforesting the stream nets should create year-round waters (plant roots hold rainwater and gradually release them). Stream nets dammed by mini-hydropower plant chains can create cheap power at terawatt levels.

Bloggers by the hundreds of thousands may contribute $5-up each over a few months to set up one such mini hydropower chain in a Philippine mountain range. The project should come with a 500-hectare watershed reforestation lease. At such high cost of local power and with ‘almost free fuel’ in the form of rainfall, hydropower profits can rise through the roof. Proof: some members of the Philippine oligarchy are power barons who used massive power generation and distribution profits to build giant corporate groups. For our model, we can charge low power rates yet raise profits even more thru a ‘sideline’ forest ranch. Our ranch raises several thousand goats, sheep and cattle that feed on high-protein reforestation leaves. Additional profits may come from production of honey, mushrooms (several species), orchids, ornamental plants, bamboo, medicinal materials, berry juices and wines, fruits, hardwoods, softwoods and rattan, all thru our 500-hectare managed forest. All the technologies already exist locally. Our power company just need to hire consultant experts to help set up the outfits. Dividends can go way above average corporate returns. Most profits should be recycled to set up a similar module in another Philippine mountain range.

How does all these address mass poverty? The key is the attraction of high profits among employee masses. Most Philippine employees dream of ‘sideline income’ to augment subsistence-level salaries that range from just $200 to $500 monthly. Our high-profit mini-hydropower with forest ranch project will encourage over 30 million Philippine employees to form thousand-member entrepreneurial groups that will build similar projects. Lacking capital, they will press for a law that grants loans to such ‘mass entrepreneurs’ provided they form joint ventures with 1st World companies. Joint ventures quadruple local capital thru dollar infusions and equipment loans. The locals will thereby get their turbines, alternators, power distribution equipment and construction materials without making more investments. The law should finance more agribusinesses that use power and water from the mini-dam chains. Examples: sweet sorghum plantations with ethanol distilleries, multi-crop farms, forested ranches, forest resorts, food processing factories, mini steel mills and parts-making plants to supply all the agribusinesses.

All the industries should create millions of jobs for the poor while flooding employee masses with stock shares and corporate dividends. Since laws take effect forever unless repealed, the happy picture just goes on for all eternity. Our Philippine model will likely be copied by all tropical countries with upland ranges, eventually employing billions of the tropics’ bottom poor. The bonus is just as planet-size: new forests and farms tropics-wide absorbing millions of tons of greenhouse gases every second, thereby arresting the progress of global warming. And this is just one among many anti-poverty guerilla tactics that blogging nets worldwide can adopt.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Bloggers' Marine Aquaculture Farm

How may bloggers lead all humanity in ending 3rd World poverty? The best way is thru the profit motive. Everybody flocks to any activity that brings in great wealth for themselves. Therefore, bloggers have to build model businesses so profitable that 3rd World employee masses will copy them. Employee masses are familiar with business and therefore most qualified to run such copycats that bring wealth to the masses rather than to the usual few entrepreneurs.

Okay, so what’s our model ‘wealth democratization’ project? This time it’s a marine aquaculture farm in the Philippines. A million or so bloggers contribute $5-up each over several months to capitalize a Philippine sea farm. The farm hires a team of Philippine aquaculture expert consultants to design operational procedures on 500 hectares of denuded sea shallows leased from state. All the farm’s sea bottom (up to 60 meters depth) gets studded with artificial reefs. Our reefs are pyramidal steel frames onto which are tied thin concrete tubes of various sizes, one tube atop another criss-cross fashion. The reefs become breeding places and refuges for all manner of marine animals. Ability to hide from predators or escape to shelter raises survival rates from 1% in reefless seas to 20% or so. Survival rates further rise thru coastal tank breeding of selected commercial breeds. At juvenile stage, the bred fish are transferred to submerged cages between reef ‘island forests.’ The caged fishes are fed non-commercial fishes harvested thru traps between reefs or thru surrounding-net boat teams that capture schooling fishes and fishes attracted by floating rafts of bamboo and leafy mangrove branches (fish aggregation devices). At the right sizes the fattened fishes, shrimps, and lobsters are sold to sea food restaurant chain buyers in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Coastal China who all pay premium prices (up to six times local prices) for live fish. A sea foods processing plant fillets, flavors and deep-freezes fishes, squid, and shellfish for export to Japan. Another processing facility produces ground fish meat (surimi) and fish balls for the Korean and Japanese markets.

At sales prices that rise to the roof, bottom-level costs and 500-hectare production volumes, profits rise to seven figures weekly. Our farm should reward blogger and non-blogger investors with dividends that are way above average financial market returns. Majority of profits should be recycled to set up another sea farm module so doubting employee groups build unassailable courage for copycat adventures.

So how does our farm address mass poverty? High profits from our model farms should encourage Philippine employee groups to set up similar farms on some 200 million hectares of Philippine seas. The country’s territorial waters are currently 85% denuded of corals. Local fishermen’s catches get fewer and smaller each year even as their boat fuel costs shoot up in order to access increasingly farther waters. Result: subsistence fishermen’s families are among the Philippines’ bottom poor. The misery should begin to end once Philippine employee masses eager for our type of stratospheric profits pressure government to pass a Loans for Mass Entrepreneurship (LME) law. The LME law grants loans to thousand-employee groups that set up agribusinesses thru joint ventures with 1st World companies. Joint venture partners usually triple or quadruple local capital thru cash infusions and equipment loans. The employee groups will thereby get their expensive work boats, fish cages, freezers, breeding facilities, diving equipment, filleting plant, etc., without making additional investments. Laws are forever unless repealed, so all Philippine sea shallows eventually get ‘forested’ with artificial reefs. Millions of Philippine coastal poor get regular high-paying jobs. Billions of dollars in stock shares and dividends flow among local employee masses, for all time. If the model gets copied throughout the coastal tropics, much of the world’s bottom poor gets redeemed for good. And an ecology-rebuilding bonus ensues: new tropics-wide reef phyto-organism populations absorb untold volumes of carbon dioxide in the water, thereby arresting the acidification of seawater which can wreak havoc on sensitive marine populations. Preservation of endangered marine species comes with creation of mass wealth. The world will perpetually honor our vanguard model-building blogger army for such heroism.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Bloggers' Model Sweets Production Farm

Surfing anti-poverty and ‘global warming’ blogs can both be exciting and depressing. One feels the intense desire of bloggers to end the misery of the world’s over five billion poor. One also feels the frustration, because hardly any blogger-initiated practical solutions exist. Almost all solutions forwarded depend on politicians to act on the problem. Unfortunately, politicians seem to run out of ideas when faced with planet-scale problems. These facts force us bloggers to depend only on our blogging nets to realize our ideals. Fortunately there are ‘guerilla ways’ to solve both poverty and global warming problems at the same time, namely project modeling. The major advantage of guerilla tactics is even small groups with small weapons can go to action mode. The combined effects of numerous and endless small slashes on the poverty monster is its ultimate demise from loss of blood.

Okay, so let’s start one guerilla raid: creation of a model sorghum farm with managed fruit forest for sweets production in the Philippines. Our farm has to be highly profitable so local employee groups will copy it. Capital comes from several hundred thousand bloggers contributing $5-up each over a few months. Technologies come from Philippine consultant experts in sorghum agriculture, syrup production from sweet sorghum, fruit preservation, manufacture of sweets, culture of fruit trees, row fruits cropping, and commercial production of health drinks and anti-oxidant juices.

Farm site is a 500-hectare upland state lease, 100 hectares of which are low-slope. An upland stream net gets heavily reforested to provide irrigation water thru mini-dams and buried PVC pipelines. Our hired worker teams use three-wheel tractors to plant the low-slope plots with sweet sorghum, papaya, pineapple, melons, peanuts, sesame, bananas, red mungbean, and other fruiting row crops that fit the soil and climate. Other worker teams reforest 400 hectares of uplands. Sixty percent of forest are fruit trees: mangoes, cashew, mangosteen, longkan, papaya, fruity palms, jack fruit, avocado, forest berries, etc. The farm constructs a sorghum syrup and fruit processing facility in a nearby town that has power lines. Sweet sorghum harvests yield tons of syrup. The syrup becomes base for production of candied fruits, canned purees and fruit cocktail, fruit juices, and regional sweets. As the trees bear fruits, sweet sorghum syrup becomes the base for producing more processed fruits and fruity syrups of great variety, plus anti-oxidant health drinks, berry wines, and medicinal preparations. Currently all such products command high prices in both local and export markets. Low farming costs and high prices guarantee mammoth profits. Our farm rewards blogger contributors and other investors with quarterly dividends that are way above average financial market returns. Most profits get recycled to build another model farm to allay all observers’ doubts as to the model’s long-term profitability.

What’s the anti-poverty impact? Our model farms should encourage local employees to set up copycats on 18 million hectares of Philippine uplands. Local employees hardly have any savings for capitalizing ‘large’ businesses so they will press for a law that funnels a major portion of state budgets towards funding reforestation-based agribusiness projects. The law has to require foreign joint venture partners for every project in order to triple or quadruple local capital thru dollar investments and equipment loans. Ideal joint venture partners are Asian 1st World companies that manufacture medicinal preparations, health drinks, juices and purees, fruit cocktail, etc. Pacific Rim restaurant and fast food chains that offer desserts, fruity ice-cream, fruit pies and regional sweets should be welcomed as well. The scheme assures large export markets as well as foreign investments for the agribusinesses.

To make sure at least half of resultant billion-dollar profits get into the hands of employee masses instead of a few local entrepreneurs, our financing law must require employee borrowers to form thousand-member groups that will become the local joint venture partners. The provision spreads out fortunes in the form of stock shares and dividends among the masses. A good law takes effect forever so our ‘loans to mass entrepreneurs’ law should keep creating agribusinesses, supplier industries, service companies and millions of jobs not only in the Philippines but all over the tropics, for all time. 3rd World tropical countries will very likely copy the profit-making, job-creating Philippine model. The result can only be a major realization of our dreams for the 3rd World tropics: billions of bottom poor employed, deforestation checked, denuded lands greened, billions of tons of greenhouse gases absorbed by a greening planet, global warming toned down. And it all starts with mere loose change contributed by each of several hundred thousand bloggers over a few months.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Bloggers' Mangrove Aquaculture Farm

How may we bloggers begin to act on the poverty problem? One way is to build model businesses that 3rd World employee groups will copy. Example: a model mangrove aquaculture and reforestation farm in the Philippines. Reforestation is not exactly popularly known as a profitable activity, so we have to design for profitability. One highly-profitable product line for a mangrove aquaculture farm cum reforestation is cage culture of crabs and shrimps. The Philippine mangrove crab, tiger shrimp, white shrimp and brown shrimp are all high-priced sea foods in local and export markets. Technologies exist in the Philippines for high-profit breeding and grow-out of the brackish water animals thru mangrove cage aquaculture. What discourages local investment is the relatively high initial cost of an aquaculture project. Lately, new technologies have been developed to rebuild denuded mangrove belts while providing space for floating cages and breeding facilities. To maximize profits, we feed caged crabs and shrimps with non-commercial fishes caught in the wild or raised in the same pond where the grow-out cages float. Since feeds are ‘almost free’ and prices stratospheric, profits rise to great heights. Philippine aquaculture experts as consultants provide the design and production procedures.

Brackish water pond operators in the Philippines are millionaires even though they follow old procedures that once almost devastated the Philippine aquaculture industry due to overuse of artificial feeds. We can go organic and rebuild mangrove forests yet beat the oldies in the profit-making game.

What are the social benefits? Our model farm’s highly attractive returns should encourage Philippine employee groups to set up copycat farms. Lacking capital, the employee masses shall press for state loans, thereby diverting billions of pesos away from corrupt politicians’ hands and into production. The loans should reforest Philippine river mouth coasts, which are 90% denuded of mangroves. The Philippine example copied all over the tropics creates millions of jobs for coastal poor while helping address global warming.

How may it all start? Just $5 or so from each of several hundred-thousand bloggers over some months can set up one mangrove aquaculture farm that yields returns way above average corporate dividends. Most profits should be recycled to set up another farm module to impress all doubters. As everyone knows, everybody flocks to any business that shows good profits. The profit motive should be our blogger army’s main anti-poverty weapon. What the wealthy did the masses and their allies can do.