Humans who grow organic

Meet Patrick Taylor - former United States Air Force policeman who now farms in the fields of Mindanao, Philippines 🇵🇭

"I am an American who chose to come and live in the Philippines. After moving to Mindanao and seeing the ravages of poverty and starvation, I decided to do something about it. I enrolled to learn agriculture and in 2015 I received my national certification in organic agriculture to teach in the Philippines.

My classmates in the agriculture course called me "Hybrid" due to the fact that a white farmer was practicing Asian farming in Mindanao. That is where the name of my venture Hybrid Agricultural Empowerment came from.

It was hard to see a child wake up hungry and I understood this only when I immersed  myself with the community and started living up in the mountains with the locals. Along with starvation, there were other conditions like limited supply of clean water and poor sanitation. I would fetch firewood or water with them and work all day long in the fields. I did composting from available inputs, taught multiple classes on applied organic farming technologies and taught the school kids English, Math and planting the school's gardens. For me it is not simply growing food; it is community rehabilitation and believe me it is not always easy or glamorous because farming is looked down upon as a peasant's profession and people like me are fighting to remove that stigma.

I have worked all over Mindanao and trained roughly 2,500 Filipino tribal farmers in technology free organic farming without the input of any government or NGO all in the span of 18 months. I have conducted multiple training workshops on basic composting, organic concoctions and growing tutorials and I would love if some of you used my methods in other countries.

Many headlines have mentioned the ongoing drug war in the Philippines. I have actually gone into some of these areas and helped train drug surrenderees to pursue  an alternate livelihood and save them from reverting to drugs again.

I grow anything that feeds the mind, body and soul. Poverty must be addressed first before we move on to support normal livelihood.

All of my materials for growing food organically are free to anyone and I will make time for any questions that you may have. I don't get paid for any of the work I do and I  never charge to teach. To make someone pay to learn how to sustain life on a planet that cost nothing is utterly the textbook definition of insanity to me. No one should ever commodify nature. Nature doesn’t charge us for anything she provides. What nature does is essentially what I am teaching you.

I believe I am in the best place on earth right now mentally, physically and spiritually. I found my humanity when I gave up the conveniences of modern life. I discovered that people who had nothing in terms of material were the happiest people I had ever seen. I will teach until I die or am physically unable to do. I want to spread the word of nature and continue to help present a positive image for my Filipino brother and sister farmers. I have a lot of work ahead of me but I also know that I have the best people by my side"

You can follow Patrick Taylor's organic farming journey on
Hybrid Agricultural Empowerment

www.hybridagriempowerment.com

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmZUE2e5O9Pijm50rP04YGg

Humans Who Grow Food  features stories of home gardeners and farmers across borders and cultures.

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