THiNK Journalism

Christmas is almost here, and I'm already celebrating 2019 as my most creative year in independent science journalism – especially dedicated to the new PH Agriculture under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie. At 79, age doesn't matter if you don't mind! I am not in the image above (a Windows 10 collage); I have no car; I have not won in a lottery; I am past retirement age at 79 – and yet: I must thank God for the blessings that my digital mind has afforded me. Blessings?Not money. But of course there is wealth in there – a wealth of creative thinking that age has enhanced much. So now I can think of a new subject faster, grasp what is known better, absorb more and extract more insights, write and blog faster than you can say, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! I'm exaggerating just a little. Look, from 01 September 2019 to today, I have blogged (in iParadigm Shifts ) 114 thought-provoking, Rip Van Winkle-waking, gender-respecting, mind-changing, highly

Top half cover shown above, Team ICRISAT Champions The Poor is the title of my first book published in 2007 by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT; when PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie was Director General, DG, of ICRISAT. Why am I bringing it up?  To give you a concrete idea how good a leader William Dar is. William Dar was DG of ICRISAT from beginning of 2000 to end of 2014, that is, 15 years. That alone will tell you how excellent a DG he was – ICRISAT is based in India, and if I know the Indians, they are hard to please. In any case, when I became international consulting writer of ICRISAT in early 2007, based in Manila, Manong Willie had already brought ICRISAT from summa cum maude (Ilocano slang for dead last ) to #1 among the 15 international agricultural research centers composing the CGIAR group, which included the venerable IRRI. Manong Willie is our #1 Team Captain when it comes to agriculture! When President R

You are looking at the upper half of the cover of SEARCA's first published Professorial Chair Lecture, by multi-awarded UPLB Professor of Land & Water Resources Engineering Victor B Ella, with the long title, "Conservation Agriculture: A Biological Engineering Approach To Sustainable Agriculture In Support Of Rural Development In Southeast Asia" published by SEARCA with 64 inside pages in 2018.  Outright, I want to say this is the most intelligent research and report on what Mr Ella refers to a "conservation agriculture" that which I know fits perfect into what I believe is "organic agriculture" – with conservation referring to the objective and organic referring to the process. In the Abstract, Mr Ella says: Conservation agriculture... is based on the principles of minimum soil disturbance, continuous mulch cover, and diverse crop species rotation. Without consciously realizing it, Mr Ella has defined the organic agriculture that I appreciate and

Above, the SEARCA Style Guide is a thick 100-page manual addressed to authors submitting their papers for publication by the Southeast Asia Regional Center for Graduate Study & Research in Agriculture, SEARCA. The Style Guide is formidable, even daunting – and very heavy, literally , as it has thick paper dividers with labels. I am an Editor in Chief many times over, but I am daunted by this Style Guide. This is the latest edition. As an author of a technical paper, are you brave enough to open the pages of the Style Guide – 100 pages and there is no index for locating an instruction with its exact page to check with? Being a practical man, what did I do when I was Editor in Chief of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science, PJCS, the Journal of the Crop Science Society of the Philippines, CSSP? I wrote an entirely new Contributors Guidelines of only 2 printed pages, and that included how to format your References or Literature Review , a tedious process. I know. So what I did was I

Under the new PH Agriculture, with Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie, one of the paradigm shifts is toward youth entrepreneurship in farming. Youth would mean not more than 25 years old, right? Manong Willie is thinking of funding each youth entrepreneur with P 500 K to kick off a bright idea or something off the ground, literally. To be fair – Manong Willie, how about cultivating us senior entrepreneurs in agriculture? I'm 79, and I have a bright idea of my own for a mini-max kind of farming: you know, minimum inputs, maximum outputs. My bright idea has to do with a different kind of organic farming. No, it is not the organic farming you keep reading about in books, newspapers and even on Facebook. Except the name, this idea actually has been in my mind in the last 50 years or so; yesterday, when I saw the book published by the Asia Rice Foundation, ARF – see half of book cover above – I was reminded of it. It just so happens that the cover shows green and brown –

His paradigm shifted to the negative, Jasper Y Arcalas says in his latest report in BusinessMirror: "Rice Self-Sufficiency Rate Seen Dropping Further [1] ." His story may be factual, but his assumption is frightfully wrong!  Even if so – So what?! Every single PH Secretary of Agriculture before William Dar/Manong Willie went after rice self-sufficiency – and of course they all failed . They did not know, or did not realize, that all the odds were against it. For one, PH has the highest cost of producing rice per kilo in the Asean: PH P 12/kilo, Thailand P 8/kilo, and Vietnam P 6/kilo – how can you compete when you cannot sell lower than your production cost? How can you compete when you are a good farmer but you are a bad businessman? More than 2 years ago, now PH #1 Farmer Manong Willie already saw the difference between food security and food sufficiency [2] . In his Manila Times column dated 27 October 2016, he noted that The Economist treated food security as the abili

Up to now, amidst the crisis of rice prices, PH rice farmer leaders continue to blame the government, and continue to ignore looking for how they can help solve the national rice problem.  These farmer leaders are repeating exactly the same mistake of looking at the problems of rice production as largely environmental and not technical, not in the manner of growing the crop, not even in the harvesting of the panicles and processing of the grains after harvest – exactly as foresters looked at it more than 12 years ago. In the first paper presented in the book (image above from the book cover), Felino P Lansigan, Rex Victor O Cruz & Rodel D Lasco say in "Linkages Of Forest And Water Resource Use And Management To Sustainable Rice Production In The Philippines," page 11: Much of the country's land resources exhibit various degrees and nature of degradation, largely due to adverse topography; climate factors, particularly excessive rainfall; soils that are prone to erosio

Look at the fiery image (inset) of Prezi , which I saw on Facebook. Good imagery, bad connection; that's not how a creative brain works! Look at the main image, my Windows 10 collage: that's how your brain works trying to create something. You need your creativity first , but Prezi ignores it and insists on its own! "How the human brain works" – Ha. There is no such thing as a Left Brain and a Right Brain – That's a no-brainer! But there is such a thing as critical thinking and such a thing as creative thinking . Yet Prezi does not mention either. The whole claim to fame of Prezi is that, without mentioning & explaining creativity first of all, Prezi is like saying: Prezi is creative for you, do not worry about it. That's exactly why you should worry about it! I have the privilege to say all that. I am the world's most creative writer online, non-fiction ; my 5,000+ long essays uploaded in my many blogs since 2005 should prove my contention. (For

"There should be means in which we can really commercialize the results and lessons we have learned from CPAR," Department of Agriculture, DA Chief William Dar/Manong Willie was talking at the 4th National Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CPAR) Congress held end of October 2019 at the BSWM Convention Hall in Diliman, Quezon City. The Congress was organized by the Bureau of Agricultural Research, BAR, and the Southeast Asia Regional Center for Graduate Study & Research in Agriculture, SEARCA. The BAR is under the DA. CPAR is a program that has been pursued by the BAR in the last 20 years, and SEARCA researchers have been studying (a) CPAR's successes , to be used as guides to pursue similar programs elsewhere in the country, and (b) CPAR's failures, to prevent their recurrence. Funded by the BAR, the SEARCA study began December 2018 and will last until May 2020 [1] . Commercialize the results – That was the challenge Manong Willie posed at the CPAR

PH is a member of the World Trade Organization, WTO, and we have to follow the rules, or we are out of world trade! It is as simple as that. Following WTO, we had to pass the Rice Tariffication Law, RTL, whether we liked it or not.  Farmer Leaders: If you are thinking only of rice, you are out of this world! "Rice, Free Trade And Trade Wars" is today's Manila Times column of Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie [1] . He points to the ongoing US-China trade war, but PH cannot afford any trade war, can we? Ah, Manong Willie says: Free trade could also be the key to a country's progress, if we strive to export more products. As of now, we are thinking only of rice, and how the prices of unmilled and milled rice have fallen to desperate levels, brought about by rice importation as allowed and encouraged by the RTL. Now we look at the RTL as the Enemy of the Rice People. But in fact, as Pogo says: We have seen the enemy, and it is US! Not the United States,