BY THE TIME you read this item this morning, we will be winging our way to Jakarta, Indonesia, with the group headed by NFSP President Nene Rojas who also heads the Growers Planters Association. This is a “Lakbay Aral,” or educational trip.

It was my suggestion that we must learn where our popular variety before came from, the then famous POJ 3016 before the war, then later POJ 2678 and POJ 2961 and POJ 29.

They became the parent stock of what later became Phil 5333, then the famous Phil 56226, developed by our late friend, the country’s highly recognized sugar scientist Felipe Aala.

All POJ varieties came from Indonesia. POJ is a Dutch term we called Pride of Java. When we say “Phil” this is a variety developed by our Philsugin and now SRA in La Granja.

POJ was first used in 1905, together with H 109, from Hawaii which at that time was producing only from 46 to 82 piculs per hectare. A picul is 63.25 kilos. Now we use LKG or a 50-kilogram bag.

Many of us remember the Java Ratio, a method of computing sugar recovery.

Today’s varieties, like Phil 92-0577 averages 366 LKGs to a hectare. I don’t want to bore you with the science of sugarcane varieties which I learned from Dr. Teresita S. Jereza, supervising agriculturist, and Efren Landoy, chief agriculturist of SRA.

I plan to know more about the Indonesian sugar industry which was left behind because it did not cope with research after the Dutch left it in 1949.

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But Indonesia is an exotic land. That’s where we came from in the 10th to the 14th century. Many of our words have their roots there. It is not difficult to understand the Bahasa Indonesia. I was there nearly 30 years ago.

If Sen. Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate in this year’s U.S. election wins, you will see the closeness of Indonesia with the U.S. Obama grew up in Jakarta because after his Kenyan father left his American mother, she married an Indonesian.

Obama can speak the Bahasa in the same way that GMA can speak Cebuano, having grown up in Iligan City in Mindanao.

Indonesia is historic as the world’s biggest Moslem country.

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Indonesia is a big country. Its population in 2000 was 228.5 million while we had only 82 million. It is an island nation like ours but while we have 300,000 square kilometers in area, Indonesia has 1.919 million square kilometers.

But it is not very much populated. Its population density is 119 persons per square kilometer compared with ours at 278.

Their population growth is 1.2 percent a year compared with ours at 1.9 percent. We are a Catholic country where population control is discouraged.

But while our life expectancy has been placed at 67 years, Indonesia has 64 for females. For male it’s 63 for us and 61 for them.

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Like us, Indonesia had been under foreign power. We were ruled by Spain, then the Americans, the Japanese, then the Americans again and Independence in 1946.

Indonesia was first conquered by the Portuguese, then the Dutch drove them away until World War II when it came under the Japanese and Independence in 1949.

I said Indonesia is historic. Before the coming of the Europeans, Indonesia, Java particularly, was the seat of the Majapahit Empire ruled by an emperor named Shri Visaya.

I cannot find in any reading material on the Majapahit Empire that was from the 10th to the 14th century. Nor could I find the name Shri Visaya.

I remember this from high school when on my second year, there was a subject Oriental History. There’s none of that now.

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In the record of Transparency International, the world’s greatest thief is the late Indonesian President Suharto and Ferdinand Marcos only ranks second. But in the list at No. 10 is another Filipino Joseph Estrada.

Before in the world’s record of the most corrupt country in Asia, Indonesia was No. 1. Now, Transparency International records show the Philippines dislodged Indonesia as the most corrupt.

Indonesia is second only to the Philippines. Shameful!

One thing the Indonesian government is serious about now is its campaign against the corrupt. We are serious only in making noise. But corruption goes on unabated.

We want to learn the good things from the Indonesians.

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