I've finally been to the place of Prof. Ted Mendoza in Los Banos, Laguna.
Yesterday (31 Mar), our President and I went to Professor's place to discuss with him matters about our economic development framework and endeavors.
Finally, I was able to get inside the much-touted tall mini conference hut. The picture shows the inside of the "conference room" which structure is made of bamboo. The floor size is about 10 sq. m. and can accommodate about 10 people for a meeting.
Compared with other houses in his community, Prof. Ted's is more nature-friendly as the owner is a true-blue sustainable agriculture advocate. His place looks like a part of nature as it is adjacent to the vast hectares of rice land.
As soon as I entered the gate, which is also a latticework, I already observed many things proving his sus-ag nature: Seed beds, a green garden which center is a set of cemented round table and chairs occupied by medicinal plants, hanging pechay, cooking place that uses coconut husks and wood for cooking, odorless swine sty, two nipa huts flanking his house, three cats in the kitchen sink waiting for our food leftovers, pineapple chunks as our snack, honey to sweeten our coffee, mango and coconut trees that partly surround, as if guarding, the conference hut, our lunch that included fried tilapia, talbos (a kind of leaf vegetable), and tahong (a kind of sea food), soup of which was made savory by lemon grass ingredient, and the like.
I could not help but compare Prof. Ted's place with ours in the Marikina City, wondering if we can also be "sus-ag" even if we are living in the urban area. This is indeed a great challenge to me. I know there is the concept of "urban agriculture", but I really need to make this concept work in my place.
To see more pictures of Prof. Ted's place, visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/dungkal/tags/tedmendozaplace.
Activism 102 