On Digital Knowledge & PH Agriculture – I Love You, Peter Wallace!

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On Facebook, PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar shares “Peter Wallace, noted columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.net, on agriculture” as saying:

Everything we do today is digitized. So I consider the Department of Information and Communication Technology as with the Department of Agriculture, the most important departments in the government today.

100% I agree as an intense blogger of 13 years and a professional agriculturist!

Inset is my Windows 10 collage, with Mr Dar at the bottom right, dated 2018. As an indefatigable blogger, I began digitizing data & information in practical agriculture for the world earnestly in January 2007 when he hired me as international consulting writer of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, when he started his 8th year as Director General of ICRISAT, which was/is based in India. I began my aggie science digitization with the blog iCRiSAT Watch.

I am extremely glad Mr Wallace appreciates digitization of knowledge, especially agriculture. The DICT and the DA should make a formidable team in bringing digital knowledge anywhere in the Philippines anytime under any circumstances!

Mr Wallace wants PH agriculture to be “preeminent,” saying that “The production of food efficiently and cheaply must be of highest priority.” He says No to agrarian reform – and so do I, son of a farmer. He points out to problems in production and infrastructure.

And then about the men in the middle:

There’s also the problem of too many middlemen doing little but capturing the bulk of the profits because the logistics is not there.

Confidently, Mr Wallace says, “The Philippines should not only be supplying all the food Filipinos need, but also be a major supplier to the world.” But right now it has to buy rice when it has to augment the supply. He says, “One thing the Duterte administration has done that deserves high credit is the freedom to buy rice at competitive prices.” That reminds me of Mr Dar saving PH some P2.2 billion by publicly bidding fertilizer importation (see my essay, “Marlen V Ronquillo – I Agree With You, “In A Prostrate Sector, Vileness Does Not Rest[1],” 29 June 2020, THiNK Journalism, Digital). Mr Ronquillo was questioning the bidding and I was questioning his questioning!

#5, Information Technology – Mr Wallace says:

Paper has to go as an electronic world takes over. The preeminence the Philippines has attained with call centers can be expanded into more sophisticated services and production of the hardware, and make the country a leader as we have the skills.

And yes, we Filipinos have the digital minds! Please note my blog’s name is THiNK Journalism, Digital. Mr Dar himself has his own 17-year old digital idea: Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture – and I have written a digital book to implement it.

So, when finally we can convince the President and Congress to provide the funds to digitize Philippine agriculture from soil to spoon:

I at 79 will surely be there:
(1) helping transform technical language to popular, and
(2) blogging with all my heart!@517

 


[1]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/06/marlen-v-ronquillo-i-agree-with-you-in.html


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