From food insecurity to food sovereignty
Biao is a Manobo Indigenous people (IP) community in Palimbang. It has vast and fertile land. With the help of Pasali, who introduced sustainable upland farming in 2006. Biao is now cultivated much of its land for rice and corn adapting upland SRI and so called System of Corn Intensification (SCI). And an integrated or intercropping of upland SRI and SCI is also recently practice in Biao. They cultivated about 40 hectares for rice and corn farming, more than enough for consumption.
Mr. Duma Bonifacio, sittio biao leader with his wife Vilma and two farmers of Biao on their farm
With the leadership of Mr. Duma Bonifacio and his wife Vilma, people in Biao is heading into one destination- uplift their lives. In their farming, every purok (zone) in village has its own area maintained and individual farmer have ½ to 2 hectares farm adapted upland SRI, SCI and intercropping. The good thing is they help each other in plowing, planting and everyone is dedicating on their farm. This month they started harvesting their corn.
SCI resulted 2- 4 corn in one plant
Indeed, Biao is on his way- “from food insecurity to food sovereignty”. Before, most of the time their food is root crops such as camote or cassava, even this is lacking. Very few families grow vegetables in their backyard, they relied much on bamboo shoots and rattan spurt. And now Biao was expected to harvest hundreds sacks of rice and corn, sufficient to feed people of Biao and can even trade to other community.
A finance system that empower farmers
Pasali will extend support to SRI farmers in Palimbang not individually but through farmer’s cooperatives. Farmers are forming cooperative themselves in every village with the help of Pasali staff.
In this system, all support to farmers will be granted into farmer’s cooperative, onetime cash for planting, seeds, organic fertilizer for all members. Every member should practice SRI, ¼ hectare trial plot for new and maximum of 3 hectares for old practitioner. Their respective cooperative is responsible for the distribution of finance individually and collection of account. The farmers nearby can also avail the farm equipments (tractor, thresher & weeder) of Pasali through rentals.
This kind of finance system toward farmers is definitely better than individual support. It is easier to monitor and farmers will not be dependent to Pasali. They will learn to enhance and maximize on what they have and not always asking on what could be given to them.
In fact this kind of support was already practiced by Pasali to 33 individual SRI farmers. The result was good since almost all farmers paid back the finances to them, but there are some who got failure on their yields because of farm infestation.
Farmers have positive response to this kind of support. Though it’s not enough to cover all the expenses in farming, but it gave hope for them and a chance to uplift their living by helping and trusting each other. In which can create a lasting peace that Pasali also promotes.
Pasali main goal is building an empowered and sovereign community that promotes food security. Pasali want farmers to boost up the support to them to become sustainable. And they believed that this approach be able to empower farmers and eventually on their community.
Make a style guide
We had a brief lecture regarding corporate identity, last Sunday August 8, 2010 at Pasali office. Our guest from Netherland Mr. Michiel Wolters, an industrial design student. He gave his feedback on Pasali informational kit (press kit) we made, including the 
brochures of Pasali.
We (student) in copywriting course has lack of knowledge in design. It is not our craft. But we are very much interested to learn, even basics of design that we can use in our endeavors. Mr. Wolters suggestions on the informational kit:
Logo
- Pasali have only one logo that represents the identity of the organization.
- Even it has many programs/departments that operate separately; it should have one main logo. There is small additional detail that specifies its difference but the idea should be recognize as same organization.
- The logo should be quite bigger and clear to see easily the impression.
Logo Colors
- Don’t use spectrum logo and it should not pixelated.
- If it has multiple colors, don’t make too detailed/obvious colors because it will look exaggerated. Just simple!
- Basically, use one color to represent the identity of the organization.
Text
- It is suggested to use gray scale text because it’s easier to read.
- Be consequent in text alignment and spacing.
- Use same font on all text, the font size and colors varies, it depends on the usage.
Picture
- The picture should be clear and easy to recognize. Put a picture that at one glance you can see what it is about.
- Don’t use too smalls picture.
- If more than one picture, the style (shape, borders) should be the same with the others.
These points could be bundled into a STYLE GUIDE. So, it will easily recognize that it is one organization (PASALI). I know there are so many things that we should learn in corporate identity. ButI think the things above are the good start.
bluemarty 
