Wheat Flour Subs.and Arable Lands

July 20,2009 Substitutes Gorpido, Jr.

Wheat Flour By Quirico M.

Maasin City, Southern Leyte, Philippines-Now that the price of wheat flour is always rising and the taste of bread is getting lesser and its sizes diminishing, it’s time to look for a substitute or alternative flour. However, it’s not wise to completely abandon the use of wheat flour in making breads and cakes. To lessen the expenses of buying sacks of wheat flour, which we import from the USA, Canada or China, our local manufacturers or flour millers should turn to rootcrops like camote, gabi, ubi and palao. I have read an article that camote can be made into flour.Camote, considered by some people as the poor man’s staple, is nutritious as it contains some vitamins and minerals. If camote can be made into flour, it is also possible that other rootcrops like gabi, ubi, palao and other edible rootcrops under the gabi family can be made into flour. We should exclude cassava (kamoting kahoy or balanghoy in Visayan term) as alternative flour since this rootcrop is not recommended for eating by the doctors to those who have goiter. With the ubiquitous availability of flour substitutes/alternatives in the near future nationwide from the four aforementioned rootcrops, the ratio of mixture for both bread and cake should be 50 percent wheat flour, 25% camote and 25% gabi or ubi or palao. By these 2 or 3 combinations of flour substitutes, bakery owners throughout the country can save some money for buying wheat flour without minimizing the palatability or deliciousness of a bread, sopas, cake and other bakery products. Bread and cake eaters can also get a double nutritional value from such kind of mixture which can be sold in cheap price to the customers. Squash puree can also be added as the third party ingredients if bakery owners so desire to boost the reputation of their respective bakeries. Our agriculture experts and scientists must start now doing a research on some edible Philippine rootcrops and legumes if it can be converted into flour. If a series of experimentations would prove that these organic plants are viably versatile for flour conversion, a milling machine must also invented design to suit the plants texture in the milling process. The kind of milling machine to be invented should be unique that will retain its high percentage of the flour’s vitamins and minerals. What’s the benefit of eating plant flour if it’s already devoid of its vitamins and minerals contents due to the application of various stages of refinement process? When some applied measures necessary for the attainment of our objective have already been realized, our millers, producers and businessmen who are engaged in the mass production and selling of rootcrops’ flour must not be tempted to export it to other countries, like what I’ve read about the camote flour. They must first serve the almost 90 million Filipinos who are in need of nutritious flour to help lessen our malnutrition problem afflicting millions of young and old. It should be made available in every municipality and city in all regions of the country where there are bakery establishments. Our farmers should also be encouraged and persuaded to plant more and more rootcrops and legumes, aside from rice, fruits and vegetables in their vacant lots and farms. This is in order to sustain the needed materials in the mass production of local flour that could be mixed with 50% wheat flour. The achievement of a self-sufficiency status in local flour production from rootcrops and legumes would eventually lessen our expenses in buying imported wheat flour, which is already very expensive nowadays. It would be

good and better to experiment if, like grapes, wheat can also be grown here in the Philippines. It would be better still if bakery owners would shift to using brown sugar to sweeten their breads and cakes since it contains vitamins and minerals, compared to refined sugar that only gives us sweet and nothing else. What’s wrong if your bread or cake now looks brown because of brown sugar? Although white color can easily attract the eyes of the beholder, in its superficial sense of beauty, but when it comes to food nutrition, color white would mean nothing important if it does not contain vitamins and minerals needed for the body. On the other hand, attracting more consumers/customers to buy bread and other bakery products in a certain bakery would always depends on how the master baker has balanced the various ingredients he puts in each of his cooked product that would become palatable when eaten. It would also mean that each bakery or the master baker himself has to maintain the ingredients formulated in each kind of bake for sale. Taking out 2 or 3 of the formulated ingredients of a certain type of bread would unwittingly mean driving away some of patronizers, which is detrimental to ones business. (Copyright 2008 by Quirico M. Gorpido, Jr.) Arable Lands Should Not Be Converted into Residential Lots By Quirico M. Gorpido, Jr. Maasin City, Southern Leyte, Philippines-It’s good that Vice-President Noli de Castro himself has made a statement during his speech before the group of farmers in Bulacan that arable lands (public and private) should not be converted into real state or subdivision. In other way of saying it, he will not allow arable lands or agricultural lands for a real state conversion. But the strength of his speech regarding the conservation of arable lands in the country will only remain until his term and that of the Arroyo administration in 2010, unless he will run for the seat of the Presidency and win. The fate of our agricultural lands in the country will always be under the control of whoever is the President, unless a law on the strict prohibition of arable land conversion into subdivision or real state will be enacted. A bitter lesson has been served to all of us now-those in the government and private sector and the millions of ordinary Filipinos: that conversion of agricultural lands into residential or housing projects will surely reduced the areas needed for the planting of vast hectarages of rice,corn,fruits,vegetables rootcrops,legumes and other edible plants for human consumption. And this is of course the logical reason that with the growing number of population in the Philippines, the more our concerned govt. officials and owners of vast hectares of land should be more serious in enforcing the strict prohibition for this kind of land conversion. On the other hand, talking on basic needs, it covers food, shelter, clothing and education.However, when we talk on what will be our priorities, mostly we would say that it is food. WE can bear with little clothes and lack of education. But when it comes to food, all of us-rich and poor-are always in need of it everyday. If we fail to eat even one day, we feel weak, lack of concentration on mental activities, could hardly sleep (hunger will always prevail over sleepiness), sluggish and other bad feelings of an empty stomach.. If the condition in the alleged “shortage of rice” will continue and its price will also continue to rise, many poor people who are jobless and landless will be forced to steal in order to eat. When food shortage will become the main issue, it will always have a heavy brunt of blame to the President’s political policies and priorities. WE hope that Vice-President de Castro, one of the popular media personalities in the past, will put more meat to his recent speech in Bulacan in front of the farmers by advising PGMA to enjoin Congress to enact a law now that will strictly prohibit the conversion of arable lands (public and private) into a real state or

housing projects whoever is the President of the Republic of the Philippines. This means that any duly- elected President who will be residing in Malacañang Palace can neither annul it, thwart it nor circumvent it by any subtle means. WE need more agricultural lands for our food requirements so that we will not be buying rice and other agricultural products anymore to our neighboring countries and become self-sufficient in foods. Producing rice and other food products ourselves would be more resourcefully productive than relying on importation by spending millions and millions of pesos, which can be turned as our savings for other important government projects and services. On the other hand, there might also be other countries of the world where like the Philippines, some of their agricultural lands were converted into real state for subdivisions or housing projects. If there are countries that also consider rice as its staple food, then it would be proper for them also to enact laws that will prohibit the conversion of their agricultural lands(arable lands) into real state or housing projects. Likewise, they should also devote vast hectarages of lands to planting rice, corn, fruits, vegetables, rootcrops, legumes and other edible plants for the people’s consumption. With active monitoring and good caring of the plants’ development, boosted by the proper application of organic fertilizer and pest control, the possibility of a bountiful harvest of all these crops every reaping season will be the fruition, which will make every country become self-sufficient in food supplies. Effective applications of modern methods and techniques in the development of agriculture and fisheries sectors must be maintained and sustained by concerned public officials, farmers and the fishermen. Periodic seminars relative to agriculture and aquatic/marine development must also be conducted on an annual basis that will provide added knowledge in these fields of endeavor. Modern methods in the preservation of freshness of consumable food products for many months to avoid staleness and spoils must also be pursued, then implemented and maintained. However, in countries where there are inherently few hectarages of arable lands with plenty of people to feed, food importation is the inevitable recourse. But for those countries that have achieved self-sufficient in foods, importation would then become unnecessary. Exportation of agricultural produce just for the sake of gain must be shunned, if by so doing, the exporting country’s inhabitants will go hungry and wanting more. Each government of nations worldwide must first feed its respective peoples contentedly so that there will be no malnourished children and adults. Only if there’s a strong manifestation of agricultural foods surplus will a particular agricultural country dare to export its extra food stocks for profits. (Copyright 2008 by Quirico M. Gorpido, Jr.)