Remember the introduction of the golden kuhol during the years of the martial-law green revolution? And also, remember some 20 years ago there was the popularized program to raise earthworms for human consumption – for hamburgers.

The golden kuhol is said to be a snail (bisokol) from Africa. It was said to have been introduced here to supplement the protein needs in the Filipino diet. As if our local bisokol or kuhol was not enough. Instead, the golden kuhol became popular as a pest and not as extra protein in our diet. It turned into a monster eating all, both weeds, native kuhol and the farmers vegetable and rice produce. It became a hated and a very destructive pest – a monster.

Also, the raising of domesticated earthworms actually became a fad, especially in town centers like Baguio where almost every household that had a little garden space raised earthworms for food because according to the government campaign, it will increase the household income. It is not known if these households also really ate them but there were establishments that bought the produce for food. Meanwhile, the mountain rice farmers in Banaue and Kabayan were complaining of giant earthworms burrowing holes deep in the center of the rice paddies making convenient drainage systems that left their rice paddies very dry and therefore unproductive, the government did not believe them then.

Today, there is a campaign launched to make popular the production of the Pangasius freshwater fish as a profitable agricultural project. It is fat and large, shark-like and a native of the Mekong Delta (China, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia). Other foreign species introduced here by our agricultural department as supposedly to raise the income and the food availability for the Filipinos include: the albino catfish, the black bass, Australian goats, sheep, Bengala fowls, French chickens, pigs from Jersey, etc.

Deeper insights into these introductions might actually paint a picture of bankruptcy or non-profitability. Why have these species suddenly lose popularity or, like the Golden kuhol, literally become pests, becoming bane to agricultural productivity?

Much like the story of Godzilla, the Japanese movie’s prehistoric dinosaur monster that landed, grew-up and destroyed Tokyo. Then brought to and got lost in New York. It mutated into a very ,very much bigger monster than the original, reproduced and wrought disaster on Manhattan. Of course, maybe like our agri-campaigns, the fiction whose purpose is to entertain, will not detail the account of how much was destroyed, lost or how many were killed as Godzilla unleashed her temper on the Apple of the US of A.

Let us leave the movie and get real. Why cannot our government services be really for the Filipino?

Develop native agricultural species to be commercially viable (if that is what they really want) for the small Filipino farmer, who really need the assistance, and put it out for the Filipino market.

Native species, more than foreign ones, have some degree of immunity and resistance to local infections or disease, that makes large savings in terms of pesticide or farm chemical input. Native products are familiar, trusted and easier to accept than foreign products that have to be advertised and pushed at the expense of local resources.

Develop the taste and saleability for the native product instead of draining people’s taxes in transactions to accommodate imported produce and giving the profits from the sale to other more stable countries and even poison ourselves – as in the melamine found in milk. Milk here is only the imported kind, locally produced milk is rare because of the lack of organized and systematic government support.

While the trade and industry offices campaign and promote “support Filipino products,” the office created to support and assist local produce is promoting something non-Filipino that may even be a financially losing monster that would further impoverish the already poor country.

Pangasius might mutate and be a Godzilla also. #