Vision Of William Dar As (Next) Secretary Of Agriculture: “Art & Science With A Farmer’s Face” – Frank A Hilario
President Ferdinand
“BBM” Marcos Jr continues as Interim
Agriculture Secretary, but as Mr Juanico necessarily and unhappily points out,
BBM “does not initiate crucial solutions to our woefully dysfunctional
agricultural economic system” (my emphasis). Continuing, Mr Juanico describes
what he calls a “monopsonistic-oligopsonistic distribution system of farm
products characterized by the multilayered system of from four to as many as
eight middlemen who depress farm gate prices to ensure their own profitability
and who are controlled by cartelized urban merchants…”
Yes Sir, Mr Juanico – our country has
reported “high GDP growth rate of 7.6 percent and its consequent [contribution
of] PhP22.02-trillion [to] the economy; however, they should ask themselves if
this growth rate has tangibly trickled down to the masses and solved the
country’s age-old problems of poverty, inequality, and unemployment.”
As an old agriculturist, UP Los Baños 1965,
I share the old agony of the problem of Farmer
Poverty. And that explains why I am focusing on William
Dar, the top image I took 27 April 2018 at a
seminar-something sponsored by RiceUp, which I now find is “a social enterprise
founded by Filipino students at Brigham Young University-Hawaii … to help
regenerate agriculture in the [Philippines]” (Di
Zhou, “RiceUp: Empowering Filipino Farmers,” 20 Sept 2018, Change Magazine, changemag-diinsider.com).
My top photo shows Mr Dar intentionally
& singularly focused on while speaking to the audience. As it turns out, I
had known him then for 11 years off and on, starting when I was appointed Writer-From-Home (WFH) for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
(ICRISAT) based in India when he was Director General (DG). He was DG for ICRISAT
for 15 years, or 3 terms, 2000-2014 – and that the Indians loved him! And why
would not the Indians love him when by his “Servant Leadership” he brought
ICRISAT, among 15 international agriculture research agencies of the CGIAR
group, from from dead last to #1?! ICRISAT became a powerhouse of science with
his Vision – “Science with a human face.”
And so, this WFH wants
the next PH Secretary of Agriculture after Mr Dar to be William Dollente Dar so that he can continue where he left
off before BBM took over, and proceed with a completely relevant slogan:
“Science with a farmer’s face.”
Above, lower image, also my photograph, is the
UPLB Alumni Plaza 4-piece sculptural installation “Ani” (Harvest) that I took
29 July 2016. I am using it now to point out that:
Mr Dar himself earned his PHD in Horticulture from UP Los Baños; certainly,
UPLB Agriculture has grown up with the Arts & Sciences, and we need them
all to help bring to life “Science with a farmers’ face!”@517
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