On the road to Digos, Mindanao....

....there are several roadside stands where wood trays are sold. The trays are carved into the shapes of pigs or fish, and are to be used for celebrations involving a roast suckling pig, a favorite among Filipinos. I stopped off at one and attracted a crowd when I asked them if they had any carved turtles that I could add to my collection - I think I must have over 50 turtles from around the world, in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and materials. They tried to sell me the eagle that I'm holding in the photo, but then they searched their huts and found one that was being used as a piggy bank and I felt a little guilty knowing that it was already in use and might belong to a child, but I don't think they felt any such guilt when I gave them cash for it. It's now in my office, next to the other turtles that I've picked up during travels in Sudan, Haiti, India, etc.

Mabuhay! Eastern Mindanao, Philippines

I recently returned from a trip to eastern Mindanao, Philippines. Mindanao is an amazing place--quite beautiful and home to some of the most amazing fruit in the world--including mangos, bananas, coconuts, durian, mangosteen, etc. I was there to conduct some research into the agriculture sector and find out how to improve their product yields and income by providing key inputs such as reliable electricity, loans for equipment and machinery, and technical assistance.

So what do I actually DO on these kinds of trips (if I worked for the World Bank, I'd refer to them as "missions"--sounds so exotic, doesn't it? "I'll be out on Mission next week......"....sounds like something out of a James Bond flick.

Anyway, here's an action shot. This was taken at a rice cooperative in Davao del Sur. The members of the cooperative were lamenting the fact that they did not have a rice mill--which means that they have to pay a trader to mill their rice, take the price that he offers them for the "clean" rice, and that he keeps the rice husks which are left over--and can be sold as animal feed in the local market. They were very skeptical about taking a loan to finance the purchase of a rice mill for their cooperative, so I decided to show the board members how much they currently earn from their crop, how much they would earn if they milled their own rice, and how they would service their loan payments from their increased revenues. It was a simple exercise--but one that they hadn't done before, and the aversion to debt is palpable in a place where moneylenders typically charge 30-50% interest rates.

Most of the rural poor rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. One of the primary issues for these people is lack of basic infrastructure and access to capital. If you don't have electricity, you can't run equipment to process grains, fruits, etc. If you don't have a decent road, costs to transport your product to a local or regional market become prohibitive. If you don't have any capital, you can't invest in equipment that will increase production and yields on your land.

This seems pretty simple to solve, doesn't it? Yet the vast majority of people that live in rural areas of Latin America, Africa, and Asia don't have electricity. How can you ever develop rural economies without it? The World Bank has been around for 50 years, and their mission is to END POVERTY. Yet the Bank does little to finance rural infrastructure. This will not magically happen--and the private sector will never provide these types of services. It seems so basic--but that's the problem--it just doesn't have the cache that other "development issues" have--like HIV/AIDS, malaria, etc.

On the listserve that we have in our neighborhood, one of the recent posts suggested that we bury the power lines because they're "ugly". Spend some time in countries where about 10 percent of the population has electricity and you'll have a whole new appreciation for those tall poles and wires connected to your home.