Thinking out of the box, 1. Why American corn isn´t funny

We do we walk away? Why do we chicken out on ourselves when it comes to corn? I´m referring to Filipino poultry raisers. They´re either yellowbellies or not using their brown heads when dealing with yellow corn. Or just chicken-hearted, all of them. Well, if you´ve seen one, you´ve seen them all. Birds of a feather flock together.

Another way of putting that is this: I just found that out today, that we have been running around like a chicken with its head cut off and running in circles because of corn.

A corn, I mean a Zea mays. A maize, if you please. Are you not amazed that we Filipinos have been feeding our imported chickens imported maize? That the cost of Philippine poultry feed is made up of 70% American maize? My, our chickens have such expensive tastes!

A Philippine study tells me all that, a 2005 master´s thesis by Nenita T Yanson of the University of Asia and the Pacific (ats.agr.gc.ca) in Manila. Old news is bad news. ´Corn is a major input to broiler feeds, accounting for about 70% of cost.´ It just happens that corn is 70% starch. I would laugh if it wasn´t imported corn.

So, in the Philippines, what our chickens have been eating isn´t chicken feed. It´s dollars.

And since we´re importing most of the corn from the US, we´re eating mostly American corn. Isn´t that funny?

Yes, we´re importing the day-old chicks we´re growing to become broilers to go to fast-food chains the likes of McDonald, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Kenny Rogers - tastes all imported, of course. Does that mean that American chickens prefer American corn? No. It means Filipino poultry raisers prefer American corn. We have our corn but they don´t like it. It may be the same corn, but this one's Stateside.

No, this is not a chicken-and-egg situation. This is a chicken-and-corn situation – well, if it ain´t chicken, it´s feathers. The problem is that birds in their little nests agree.

So now you know the reason we Filipinos cannot export our chickens to Japan, China, Russia, India, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia – our chickens are imported! And therefore very expensive. High-quality but very expensive.

So, what to do so we don´t have egg on our face? Simple: Let our Filipino poultry raisers walk away from American corn.

And how do I propose that they do that? I propose that they not use their feet but their head. I propose that they think out of the box. It's time they did some creative thinking!

This time, the box is the feedbox, that which contains 70% corn and 30% other poultry feed costs. You don´t want to be boxed in, right?

And yes, the corn is yellow. Now, let´s not have a yellow streak down our back now. Now, let´s just think out of the box. Unless of course Filipino poultry scientists are really chicken-hearted.

And for you to think out of the box, I want you to interview the very first poultry scientist you meet at the Institute of Animal Science, College of Agriculture, UP Los Baños in Laguna (some 60 km south of Manila), and ask all these questions one after the other, in sequence:

(1) Why do we use imported corn to feed our imported chickens?
(2) Why do we use corn to feed our imported chickens?
(3) Why do we feed our imported chickens?
(4) Why do we import our chickens?
(5) Why do we import?

If he doesn´t get the message, then the early bird will get the corn, not the worm.