Rice Unlimited!!

Most of you are aware that the sixth graders went to UP Los Banos. Our blog has taken you to Dairy Training and Research Institute, our next destination will take you to INTERNATIONAL RICE RESEARCH INSTITUTE! Yeah! That's right! ALL RICE!!! It  is a nonprofit independent research and training organization which was established in 1959. We went there as ready as ever! We toured the place including the Riceworld Museum, the place was really huge and it was cold inside! There were these nipa huts, scarecrows and  manequins dressed up as farmers. There were farming tools too. And just a side note, once you're inside, you can't help but to take pictures because it was really awesome there.

IRRI Headquarters

Riceworld Museum

The Nipa Hut

"Feng shan che" - Chinese winnowing fan

 The winnowing fan is a traditional machine used to separate bran and other light foreign materials such as errant straw and dust from milled rice.  It can also be used to remove chaff and straw from unmilled rice. 

We watched a video about IRRI and everything about it...Their mission: to reduce poverty and hunger; improve the health of rice farmers and consumers, and  ensure environmental sustainability through collaborative research, partnerships, and the strengthening of national agricultural research and extension systems. How this organization aims to reduce poverty and hunger, improve the health of rice farmers and consumers like me (who loves to eat rice) and to see to it that the rice production is environmentally sustainable is so commendable. Thank goodness we will not run out of rice!

grains of rice

In that video, there was this question that was raised and the answer caught our attention, "What does IRRI do to the farmers around the world?" The answer, "one of the things IRRI does is to  help educate farmers in different parts of the globe, and amazingly, most teachers are Filipinos." Doesn't it feel so overwhelming to know that we, Filipinos, are being used as God's instrument to teach other nations about the science of rice!!! Wow!!!
Check out their website for more knowledge and information about them. They will also amaze you after you learn how noble their purpose is that will benefit ME!!!... kidding... the entire world. 
Here's a link to their website, http://irri.org/about-irri

We expected to learn significant things about the organization, rice and farming and after the IRRI visit,  we did learn a lot. We now know how great the need is to find ways to improve and increase rice reproduction around the globe, we also realized the great responsibility IRRI has ... IRRI has a lot to offer, not just to some but to millions of people around the world. Proud as we are to be Filipinos, we felt it even more because IRRI's headquarters is here in the Philippines, particularly in Los Banos Laguna, and we're just so happy we've been there.


    

Happy we've been there!!!