Last May 26-29, I made a sentimental journey to Baler. Accompanying me in the harrowing 8-hour land trip was my 97-year-old mother who last saw Baler some 65 years ago. In 19401941, just before the outbreak of the Second World War in the Philippines, my parents and their first three children moved to Baler where my father worked as a young rural doctor in an anti-malaria unit in this remote outpost in the Pacific Ocean. I was barely two years old. My brother Eddie was newly born and actually got baptized in the Baler church, with the late Maria Aurora Aragon Quezon as his godmother. You can imagine what great emotions my mother felt as we attended Holy Mass in the old Baler church, made famous world-wide by the Spanish soldiers who made their last stand inside the church during the SpanishAmerican War.

As we shook and rattled for four hours on the rocky road from Cabanatuan to Baler, I confirmed once again my strong conviction that building farm-to-market roads is the one single most important solution to Philippine poverty. If Aurora had been connected with better infrastructures to Central Luzon ten to twenty years ago, it would have become a major source of food products of both Region III and NCR.

While we were in Baler, we met the very dynamic Governor of Aurora Province, Bella Angara Castillo, who is literally moving heaven and earth to endow her province with better infrastructures and basic services in health, education, and livelihood. With the help of her brother Senator Edgardo Angara and nephew Congressman Sonny Angara, she is bent on converting Aurora into an agro-tourism center by endowing the province with more irrigation systems, post-harvest facilities, farm-to-market roads, agricultural extension services and technical training programs. She has succeeded in mobilizing official development assistance from the South Koreans and Japanese who are among the best sources of agribusiness technology.

Aurora is fortunate because one of its most prominent leaders, Senator Edgardo Angara will be remembered in Philippine economic history as the one who redirected national efforts away from the failed industrialization strategies of the past towards fullblown agricultural and rural development when he served as Secretary of Agriculture under the Presidency of Joseph Estrada. I consider that period as the "tipping point" that introduced the agricultural development era of modern Philippines. To give credit to the present Administration, that Angara-inspired redirection of national efforts has actually been sustained and enhanced. A large share of the capital investments of the present Administration is in rural infrastructures, especially in the island of Mindanao.

Aurora – still isolated from the major markets of Luzon because of poor roads – will be undergoing significant transformation as its leaders implement a strategy outlined by Senator Edgardo Angara in a speech before the Senate in November 2004. The salient points of this strategy are:

* Agricultural reforms should concentrate initially on building a network of post-harvest facilities across the country to reduce loss and wastage. Right now, this is the most strategic investment in the sector. We need to provide every province with an integrated milling complex. We need dryers and silos, grains handling facilities in ports, cold chain system and refrigeration facilities.

* We can capitalize on our vast natural attractions and rich historical and cultural activities while preserving our rural environment. Local governments, with the full backing and support of the Department of Tourism, can conduct home stay programs in places where hotel rooms are inadequate or lacking. They should strongly promote sanitation and cleanliness, and ensure peace and order in their communities.

* In this pursuit, government should promote the development of sites that are out of the traditional tourist destination loop, especially in the eastern portion of the country, which happens to be the most depressed areas. These potential areas can be found starting from up north in Cagayan, Isabela, Aurora, Quezon, Camarines Norte, Albay, Catanduanes, Sorsogon and stretching down to the southern provinces of Eastern Samar, Surigao Norte, Misamis Oriental, Saranggani, the Zamboanga Peninsula, and Tawi-Tawi.

* Legislators, especially senators, can allocate some of their pork barrel budget for projects such as farm-tomarket roads, abattoirs, public markets, communal irrigation, and other water resources. These key rural infrastructure projects are critical in helping promote economic growth and progress in the countryside.

Thanks to the sentimental value of "Los Ultimos de Baler" (the Spanish soldiers who took a last stand), Sen. Edgardo Angara is generating a great deal of interest among Spanish government officials and private investors to help endow Aurora Province with the infrastructures needed for rapid development. Filipino entrepreneurs should take a close look at investment opportunities in Aurora in agribusiness, tourism, logistics, renewable forestry, energy and fisheries. For comments, my e-mail is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.