So you can?t afford to go to college? Take a course in agriculture for free. There is a P100-million scholarship fund in the budget for students who will pursue a course in agriculture. The scholarship is good for the four years of the course, provided you don?t flunk any of your subjects.

This was revealed by Sen. Loren Legarda at the Kapihan sa Manila last Monday.

The scholarship fund was set up to encourage students to take agriculture and veterinary courses to boost our food production. Very few students study agriculture because they don?t want to make their hands dirty. Most of them want to become lawyers, which is one reason Filipinos are litigious, why we have a high rate of graft and corruption, and why we have a very slow administration of justice. It is said that the lawyers look for the loopholes in the law and then delay the wheels of justice when their clients get caught.

Agriculture, on the other hand, is basic to any country. When agricultural production is low, the people don?t have enough to eat and the whole nation suffers, including the lawyers. High yields and bountiful harvests mean economic progress. The richest nations now are the oil-producing countries but when their oil wells run dry?and they will inevitably run dry?they and the industrialized countries burning their oil will be begging the agricultural countries for food, paying any price for their produce.

If you are interested in being an agriculturist, call the office of Legarda.

Legarda and Secretary Jesli Lapus of the Department of Education were the Kapihan guests last Monday. It was a pairing made in heaven. Because while the DepEd secretary lamented the lack of funds for the construction of enough classrooms, the senator immediately gave P100 million of her pork barrel for the school building program.

DepEd has an appropriation of only P3 billion for schoolhouses in the budget. That is a mere drop in the bucket. We need 15,000 more classrooms now to accommodate all the children of school age. That increases every year as the school population increases. The present cost is P1 million per classroom for a two-story building, less for single-story buildings, Lapus said. But multi-story buildings are becoming a necessity as we are running out of land, he added. (And yet Speaker Prospero Nograles wants to sell to foreigners the little remaining lands we have, even railroading a Con-ass resolution through the House of Representatives to amend the Constitution to allow foreigners to own land, even as the government denies farmers an extension of CARP [Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program] to allow them to own the land they till.)

DepEd therefore needs P15 billion to construct 15,000 classrooms. But the appropriation in the budget for classrooms is only P3 billion. So we need P12 billion more for this year alone. Next year, it would be more as the school population increases.

Legarda revealed that there is a P14-billion Special Education Fund (SEF). She proposed that we embark on a massive school-building program, to borrow to finance it (some banks have already signified willingness to lend to such a program), and to use part of the SEF to amortize the loan.

That has a four-fold effect, Legarda said. It would solve the classroom shortage. It would generate jobs in construction. The construction boom would create a chain-reaction in the industry, and demand for construction materials would increase. And the economy would therefore recover faster.

But the best effect is that students would learn better and faster. A better-educated nation is a progressive nation. Right now, students have a difficult time learning not only because there is a lack of classrooms but also because rooms are congested.

The ideal ratio of students per classroom is 30. Right now, however, public school rooms have 45 students. And many schools hold double sessions; some even three sessions well into the evening.

Then there is the problem of malnutrition among primary school pupils. Hence the school feeding program.

But why noodles? That is a Chinese, not a Filipino, staple food.

The reason is to make it easy to cook, Lapus explained. Instead of wasting one hour to cook rice and viands, you only need 15 minutes to heat water and pour on the noodles. The noodles are enriched with eggs and malunggay, the most nutritious vegetable we have, he said.

Why award the contract to supply the noodles to one supplier year in and year out?

Because it is the only supplier willing to follow the conditions of the contract, Lapus answered. The contract specifies that the supplier deliver the noodles to the schools, including those in the hinterlands. What good is food that cannot be reached by those who need it? Other noodle suppliers don?t want to bid because of this condition, but the present contractor delivers to the schools. They have enough delivery vehicles to do that.

Back to Legarda and her pursuit of the presidency. It looks like the team to beat next year is a Loren Legarda-Chiz Escudero tandem, or a Chiz-Loren team. A new survey on voter preference for presidential-vice presidential tandems has just been released.
A Loren-Chiz team-up is the top choice while a Chiz-Loren team is the second choice. Mar Roxas-Ping Lacson ranked third, while Erap-Loren is number four. Manny Villar-Noli de Castro is next, and Villar-Jinggoy after that. Ed Panlilio-Grace Padaca is kulelat (No. 15) while Gibo Teodoro-Chiz and Noli-Gibo tandems are only two slots higher. Dick Gordon-Bayani Fernando is number 14.

The Loren-Chiz and Chiz-Loren team-ups are tops in all regions and in all demographic profiles, whether urban, rural, and classes ABC, D and slightly lower in class E.