 This afternoon, we are very fortunate to have with us one of the first scholars who arrived at Erie, not the first scholar, but one of the first who arrived at Erie. First, let me read an introduction about him. Our guest speaker this afternoon graduated Kung Lao Le, B.S. in Agriculture, majoring in agricultural engineering at UPLB in 1959. He took his MS in agricultural engineering major in power and machinery in UPLB in 1964. He finished his PhD in agricultural engineering in 1968 at the Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, USA, creature in power and machinery, minor in mechanical engineering and statistics. He was an Erie MS thesis research scholar from June 1, 1962 to June 1, 1964. He was a visiting scientist in an interim head of the Erie's Agricultural Engineering Division from 1994 to 1996. He has written, presented and published some 50 articles and reports on agricultural machinery and mechanization. He was a consultant of Agronomics, Incorporated, UNDP, FAO, UNISCAP and UNIDO. He was an expert in farm mechanization and transport for the Sisi, Boris and Delayo from 1974 to 1976. He also served as a professor of agricultural engineering and dean of UPLB from October 1, 1976 to December 31, 1983. He was also an agricultural machinery expert for UNISCAP from 1984 January to 1991 December. He has a host of other achievements and I don't think we will spend the whole afternoon reading all of this. Well, anyway, we are very fortunate to have with us this afternoon one of the first scholars who arrived here at Erie. So, ladies and gentlemen, without much further ado, please join me in welcoming our guest speaker this afternoon, one of our first scholars here with Erie, Dr. Rinaldo M. Gentian. Well, thank you Achu, I'm thinking with this wonderful gadget here, which you are familiar with, I am not. It stays here, it's a tablet, which has a use. It senses that somebody is sleeping while I'm talking. Well, thank you Achu for that nice introduction. As an agricultural student at the UPLB, when I back in the 1950s until I graduated in 1959, I witnessed the development of Erie. So, I'm privileged to have an institutional memory, so to speak, from its founding, from its first state work, because I am from engineering, I was curious about what's going on. And you know this, where we are, and the whole of this little complex here around the pool, was a hill about the height of the dormitory right there in the cafeteria. So, this was level down, and this building rose. But the first building that was set up was the service building, which housed the Department of Agricultural Engineering. And the whole experiment station was banana and coconut, essentially, with some rice, palace around. And so it was the hug engineer Lloyd Johnson, who was my mentor when I was here, that developed this experiment station. And I was sort of part of that, as a scholar, and sort of on the job training during its expansion. Right there, more coconut plantations and so on. It had a wonderful setup of irrigation and drainage, never seen before in the Philippines. It was a road network, the same road network that we see now, except that there were no buildings right there in the rice paddies. This is what the material goes off. So, the flow rate of construction activities during the late 1950s, that was 58, 59, the inauguration of 1560, coincided with those of the McKinney Forest. Part of the McKinney Forest, where the Jamboree site, you're familiar with that, is now located. So, the Jamboree World Jamboree was first held in Asia in Los Minos. So, it was a Jamboree city. And you could imagine that that was a forest, sort of a virgin one. And that was clear. So, they must state it, if you would say, that it could be seen. The activities there could be seen from the farm machinery building at Pewry Drive, where we had classes. So, with these two constructions going on simultaneously, and if that happened today, there would, I'm sure, be some protest of destroying the environment, because trees were really created. But there were lessons. First of all, EV, the first international institute in cut research, developed into a world-class research institution, as we all know. While the Jamboree site was restored to the original forest, as you see now, in about 10 years only. And the lesson is, if you don't intrude on it, that the Sweden farming and local keying in the Philippines, it will restore itself. Of course, there were interventions by the boy scouts who planted those trees. But this lesson is to lose our display, that we can never reform our mountains again. I've always been in contact with EV also, aside from seeing the physical development, because we were just neighbors. Our building is the nearest building at UPLB with EV, practically neighbors. And we were very close in partnership with the Department of Agriculture and Engineering. And they are, in other words, the EV staff was in fact appointed as affiliate faculty with the UP College of Agriculture, along with the besting professors from Cornell University. So the Los Baños was really strengthened by both Erie, Cornell, and the scholars who had graduated from Erie scholars were created everywhere through various fellowships. Now, why was Los Baños selected as the site of Erie and the site of the World Jamboree? Because at that time, late 1950s, the Philippines was a burgeoning economy, only second to Japan, as they say. Second to Japan, but now no more. It's the last generation. Now, what caused this leadership in the economy? Second to Japan. I consider industrialization as the correct policy that made it. It was President El Pijo Kirino, who in 1948, he was president, had a policy of industrialization. And that's when these industries like the petrochemicals, the textiles, and all the others emerged. And this brought about more jobs and really a product economy. But that is my surprise. Why are Philippine economic planners ignored industrialization? In favor of agriculture. I'm not saying I'm against agriculture. When all the countries like, what you can name, our neighbors from Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and now Vietnam, and Laos, even, and Indonesia, they pursued industrialization to be prosperous, so that they have more jobs and so on. They pursued it deliberately. But how were all the divisions of our planners to be, oh, the Philippines is an agricultural country, and so we have to develop agriculture first. But they have been talking about this for the last 50 years or more. And nothing happened until we were overtaken by these countries pursued it. Now I have a story, and I use Bangladesh as a model. Bangladesh. A country, our critics sarcastically compare with in order to make the Philippines look good. Because, yeah, we are second at least, not the poorest, but the second to the poorest. Bangladesh, according to one writer, is the most mechanized, the most mechanized country in the South Indian continent. Why so? Well, there's a story. In 1988 and 1990, it was ravaged by two successive cyclones. I think the demagnitude like Sunday in Europe, and many massive loss of lives and devastation of property, as well as the war animals, they were decimated. And so President Ershad at the time, I had a problem. There was surely to be famine, because farmers would have worked their fields. There were no war animals. So the report is to import, this is my field, farm machinery, from either of the two, Japan or China. Well, the engineers and the scholars said, we import from Japan because of high quality. It's for the use of the farmers. But there is another reason, but we need more machines with a limited budget. But if we import from China, we have three or four times the number of machines, and we need those. So President Ershad abolished the committee and continued to import. At the risk of his political career, he imported engines and tractors from China, because, well, they are not durable, but surely they can last one season, which we need. And fortunately for him, there was rice production and there was no famine. And fortunately also, that decision ensued a kind of industrialization, a localized industrialization, because my men's scene, it was the seat of a family industry, an indigenous family industry. And true enough, when the machines and engines failed, because the parts were easily worn out, they had to replace it, these family industries and machining works in my men's scene decided to make parts themselves. And I found out that they could make it better than China. So that was a driving industry. It created more jobs and my men's scene is a prosperous town in Bangladesh. Dr. Mangur agrees with me because of that. Nobody almost is jealous because of that industry. So that is a lesson. With a happy outcome, and it is because of industrialization, little as it is. Now, perhaps Erie too may consider undertaking activities, maybe probably as a advocacy at this time, in pursuit of the goal of, I quote the goal of Erie, finding sustainable ways to improve the well-being of poor rice farmers and consumers, as well as the environment. There is the environment. The emerging culture is that if rural folks could help them, they would rather get away from agriculture and work off farm to get more income. But the policy of making agriculture the sink of abundant labor condemns the rural workers to poverty because they are poor employees of poor employers. So how can they be rich? Both of them will be at a loss, but are losing. So these workers must find a way to augment at least their income. And this is the model in Japan. The workers there, the farm workers are aging. The average age is much higher than the buildings. Our average age of farmers is 57, and up to 57, we're not that strong anymore. So what do farmers do? They hire liquiders, but unlike in Japan, the farmers there use machinery and they can work by themselves. Also women have a greater role in farming. They can work by themselves. So in the Philippines, they hire unproductive, manual labor, and that is the difference. So based on these salaries, wages of labor, laborations, be augmented somewhere from off the farm. And that's why there's an exodus to Manila because the jobs are there. Unfortunately, this has caused urban life. It has been my privilege to have been in the first, I don't know, I was not in the first bunch, second bunch or third bunch, whatever it is, but the difference April, May, June, that's the interval of the first, second, third bunch. Where was I? It does not flash where I was. And I thank IRI for this, for giving me the opportunities for doing granite work. I hope that through the years I have not worked in vain because of the noble objectives of IRI in giving such scholarships for increasing the capacities not only for the Philippines but also the other rice producing companies. Now here's the story. After finishing my MS, or I was not finished yet, at the time, in agriculture engineering, UPLB and UPD demand, you see, at that time UPLB engineering here was not that developed. So I had to take courses in UPD demand and we were a counter-duck. My colleague who joined me later were fetched by car to Dilman and brought back here every Friday evening, every Friday afternoon or evening because we had to attend the Saturday, the ERI Saturday seminar and a course by engineer Lloyd Johnson. So before I was finished, there was an offer of the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for PhD and Dr. Chandler interviewed me on the eve of my birthday and one of the most difficult questions you asked me was how old was I? I said 55. I was 55 then because he had bio-data, short-term data how would you strengthen your bio-data when you are just a young man? Before him was my birthday and I thought he was just testing me and it was a catch-22 question. What is catch-22? Whatever your answer is, is wrong. I said my answer was 55 and he said you are still 54 tomorrow is still your birthday and in America you reckon your age on your after your birthday. Why? Why? I did not disagree. You are not supposed to disagree with an interviewer. I realized that it was a catch-22 question. I had in mind a reasoning that in engineering 24.99 years is already 25 but if I answered 24 he would say the answer would be 25. So it is catch-22. This keeps on escaping me. Okay, next. Really my last word there is that this month Chander was really smart. This reminds me of a story. A contest was held between a scientist and a technologist. They were given a goal, just like they gave a goal, of touching the lips of a sexy lady precisely 10.00 meters away. But precise. From the lips. The question was give the minimum number of counts to have your lips touch the girl's lips according to the following rule. The first count is half of 10. That's right. The second count is half of 5. 2.5 And the third count is 1.25 Right, half of 2.5 and so on. Always holding the remaining half until you reach the lips. So what is the minimum half? Then you have to explain your answer. Well, the scientist answered very quickly. He was a mathematician. Infinity. He said since my lips will never touch the lips because there will always be a half remaining to be half. No matter how infinitesimal it is. Why try? We call that in mathematics an asymptotic to the line. Those of you who knows this. It is quite approaching but not quite touching. That's asymptotic. So that was a fine answer. Well, what was the answer of the technologies? He was practical. The scientist was theoretical. He said I will settle for 15 counts and that is after mentally computing, holding everything. He said by that number of counts my lips will be 0.3 millimeter. Less than a millimeter from her lips and by phenomenon of thermal expansion our lips will touch. So I am practically with the practicality of the technologies and the preciseness of both are correct but in real life you have to be practical and upstream members or the scholars and trainees and the fellows when they get back to knowledge of their institutions will be solving real life problems based on science. I have just cited my experiences and observations as research scholar of IRI. I am sure that many of you have been either trainees, scholar, fellow of IRI and have present memories and rewarded experiences of staying at IRI and Los Baños. Don't forget Los Baños. Perhaps as IRI alumni we can join the UPLD in this is all what they call a UPLD Los Baños spirit a type of band that is unique and felt more intense intensely not in Los Baños or IRI but when you go out away from IRI or Los Baños that's what they call Los Baños spirit instead of saying if you can call it we can call it IRI spirit or Los Baños spirit although we are not there and it works it feels at least when one visits a place they feel comfortable because of renewed bringing of acquaintances and banding and so since we always meet I start with being in the upstream somewhere in the partner institutions you will feel at home our IRI spirit let's say something to think about and what have we to give IRI in return I suppose that in recognition of the efforts, time and resources that IRI has spent on us a scholar, fellow or training it is but fitting and proper as a show of gratitude that we do our best in applying our knowledge gained to be productive researchers in discovering societies or innovating as technologists on various aspects of rise in our home institution or NARES our countries that have sent us to IRI would expect of us no less also we owe also to the poor rice farmers consumers in the environment no less when our best efforts have been made when we have reached a breakthrough when we in adopting the idea of the famous English pro-Satirist he is a famous English pro-Satirist Jonathan Speer who wrote in 1726 it is of my opinion that who so ever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before we deserve better of a time and do more essential service to this country than the whole race of politicians put together that we made early in just substitute two panels of rice instead of two ears of corn or two blades of grass with success when we have improved the lives of our rice farmers we will have to pay IRI by helping it approaching its goal it is the partner countries of IRI and in particular the NARIS and institutions to which we may belong that battleground is what in the world is poverty and blunder of the environment even of that the approach to the goal is at best only asymptotic