Today, Sunday, 06 March 2022, UP Los Baños Celebrates Its 113th Founding Anniversary – When It Comes To Agriculture In Relation To Climate Change, Has My Alma Mater Grown Wiser Or Simply Grown Older? Asking For A Friend!

How healthy is my alma mater UP College of Agriculture (UPCA, now UP Los Baños) as it turns 113 years old Sunday, 06 March 2022? I know it is very healthy physically – what about intellectually? In the topmost image, you see the sculptural multi-piece Man, Carabao & Plow still prominently displayed in what is lovingly called “Carabao Plaza.” Absent tractor of any kind. UPLB has not outgrown the wooden plow?
(Carabao-Man-Plow image from flickr.com, date image among 2019 photos I took)

The theme for this year’s celebration is “Fortifying Collaborations With Industry And Communities” (Jessa Jael S Arana, 01 Mar 2022, “UPLB To Mark 113th Foundation Day Anniversary,” UP Los Baños, UPLB.edu.ph). The first UPCA Dean was Edward Bingham Copeland, a botanist. As an UPCA alumnus, BSA Ag Edu 1965, I know botanists are strictly technical in language, not popular – they can hardly relate to society at large. Thus, scientific tradition explains why 113-year old UPLB does not speak much popular language despite its College of Development Communication, which espouses Development Communication (DevCom). DevCom was first established on 01 July 1962 as the Department of Agricultural Communication (devcom.edu.ph). Expectedly, as with its mother agency, DevCom has not pursued climate change on its own.

It was the Americans, some of the Thomasites, who set up the UP College of Agriculture. What could we expect? In the US, in 1849, chemical fertilizers were already being sold commercially (Mary Bellis, “History Of American Agriculture,” ThoughtCo, thoughtco.com), 60 years before the Americans established UPCA – so what else would/could they teach except chemical agriculture?

It is proudly called “Carabao Plaza” and displayed right in the middle of the road leading to the main campus. I cannot explain this very-public sculptural display when it only shows artifacts – those items belong in the Museum of Natural History that UPLB has!

UPLB has yet to relate its agriculture to climate change and what farmers can do about it – to stop emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from farms, to shift from chemical agriculture to organic agriculture, if slowly.

Yes, I just found out that UPLB instituted the Climate Change and Disaster Risk Studies Center (CCDRSC) in 2013, which is an institutional elevation of a climate change program set up in 2007. Now I ask, in the absence of any technical paper or popular article in digital media coming from UP Los Baños about chemical agriculture and its contributions to climate change, which are GHGs carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide (not to mention nitrates that poison drinking water) – when is UPLB going to institutionally recommend organic agriculture (OA) instead of chemical agriculture (CA) because OA does not while CA does produce GHGs?

UP has always been anti-this and anti-that; will history and Filipinos forgive UP for not being anti-chemical agriculture?

Today, I ask 113-year-old UP Los Baños when will it begin to teach institutionally organic agriculture? Asking for a friend!@517