Discovery of the Month ***

The textile industry sector could contribute to our sagging exports, especially with the value the modern world has placed on organic, natural methods of production.

Afew Fridays ago, I got a message on Twitter inviting me to go to a Philippine textile event at the Senate. It was sent to me by Shirl (through her personal account). Shirl works for the Philippine Textile Research Institute under the Department of Science and Technology (DoST-PTRI).

I had no idea the DoST-PTRI even existed. The magnitude and reach of the Science Department’s related agencies is a gift that keeps on giving; there is a related agency spanning diverse sectors from food processing to weather forecasting to nuclear research.

Allow me to digress a bit.

In the latter half of 2016, my network gave me the opportunity to do a public affairs show close to my heart. Since it frustrates me to no end that we rely so much on food imports and that so many Filipinos go to bed hungry at night when Philippine land is prime for agriculture, and since the bulk of our viewership is outside Metro Manila, I wanted to do what I could to catalyze the agri sector because there is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing an undernourished child comb through trash, looking for an edible morsel along the roadside, juxtaposed with vast swathes of green.

Go Local is an agribusiness show featuring small- to- mediumsized farms. In my 7 years in broadcast news, I’ve never really had the opportunity and carte blanche to run with a concept I had significantly contributed to. It’s pretty straightforward. My team and I search for MSMEs that have gone back to basics, choosing the noble profession of tending the earth, or producing something vital to human survival — food. The business has to be relatively small, profitable, scalable.

In one of the 6 episodes aired so far, we featured HLMG Farms, an organic farm that grows turmeric for processing into a food supplement. HLMG’s proprietor, Mike Chiongbian, was briefly a schoolmate, but I’d not seen him in over a decade.

We ran into each other in a restaurant one night and caught up. He introduced me to his wife, Guada and told me that they