Serving school lunches isn’t something you would expect to be part of an ambassador’s schedule, but that’s what I was doing near Manila recently.  I had travelled to the delightfully-named Tropical Village Elementary School just over an hour from the capital, to launch a supplemental feeding programme the embassy is supporting financially.
The embassy funding comes

One thing I really like doing in this job is helping New Zealand companies to open doors in the Philippines.  A sector I enjoy working with is the New Zealand wine industry — and not just because I get to sample its wares.
I was at another promotional event this week, featuring a New Zealand winemaker who was here

I’ve blogged before about the poor performance of Philippine tourism.  Despite a lot of natural advantages, the country attracts only a fraction of the tourists that some of its neighbours do.
The Secretary of Tourism in the new government, Alberto Lim, has put forward some good ideas about how to change this.  The main thrust is

Sue and I are keen travellers, and in less than two years in the country we’ve managed to see many parts of the Philippines.  This has been a lot of fun, but it has also brought us up against some of the problems facing Philippine tourism.
Numbers aren’t everything, but visitor figures show the country is

The dairy trade is big business for New Zealand in the Philippines.  Most people are really surprised to hear that the country is our fourth-most important market in the world for dairy products.
What surprises them even more is that just three years ago, the Philippines was New Zealand’s second-most important dairy market after Australia.  Since then exports

Filipinos are basketball crazy, and it seems there are courts in every village in the country.  And where there aren’t basketball courts, people are still out shooting hoops in dusty backyards and on the roads.  It’s almost up there with the passion for cricket that I’ve seen in India and Pakistan.
So you might not think

Feeding 9 billion people by mid-century will be a huge challenge.  But to do it while limiting agriculture’s contribution to climate change will take a real balancing act.  Agricultural activities connected with food production already contribute about one-sixth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.  Meeting the food production challenges of the future, while controlling those

I was down in the remote island province of Dinagat in Mindanao recently, to catch up with two boys in blue from New Zealand.  It was good to see our police officers helping their Philippine counterparts to sharpen skills in community policing and criminal investigation.
New Zealand is involved with the Philippine National Police, or the PNP as

Despite growing links between the Philippines and New Zealand, there aren’t any direct air services between the two countries.  There are plenty of good options for easy, one-stop travel, but for many people having to change planes — even when staying on the same airline — is a mental block.  And of course it makes the

How is the world going to feed 9 billion people only 40 years from now?  If the current model of food production and distribution still leaves 1 billion of the world’s 6.5 billion people hungry, is doing more of the same likely to be the answer?
Those are the questions that the World Agricultural Forum is