PH Will Never Rise From Rice Alone – William Dar

First, I'm sorry, but the article by Louise Maureen Simeon on 15 April 2019, "DAR: Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful" (The Philippine Star, philstar.com), is incorrect on 2 counts. One, DAR is notthe Department of Agrarian Reform that the headline implies – rather, it is William Dar; and I happen to know personally that Mr Dar is not "a former agrarian reform secretary" but a former Secretary of Agriculture. 

Next, the story has what I call a VIP – very important point – in the very title of the article itself: "Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful." Filipino farmers have always built their farming around rice, rice, rice – and we never got out of that circle. Or, should I say, the brightest agriculturist never got to teach out of the box to PH farmers in the field.

As a point of view, "Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful" has not been seen up to now except by an international expert in our midst, who is also a Filipino (if an Ilocano like me!) Mr Dar has been the most admired Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, which is based in India, so much so that the Indians retained him for 3 consecutive terms as DG, from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2014.

Miss Louise quotes Mr Dar as saying, "Not just in this administration, (but) over the last 30 years, producing (more and more) rice has been the goal and they did not give a chance for high-value agriculture to succeed."

As a guide to criticism, by saying "Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful." Mr Dar means if we continue to view farming as being around rice and not much else, even if we were quite successful, we will always be a One-Eyed Giant – strong but with an incomplete view of the enemy.

Mr Dar said:

Even DA now, their mindset is only in (rice) production, they are still blinded and yet to change it to agri-business which is supposed to be the right approach.

We have to teach the DA people to be business-minded first of all!

As a guide to action, "Rice-Centric Model Will Never Be Successful" points to an option in farming that has always been there:

Rice-based is multiple cropping: Rice Plus. It is the Plus that counts!

As a BS Agriculture graduate from the UP College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños, and being a wide reader, I know that rice-based is growing rice with any combination of these: eggplant, tomato, cassava, sweet potato, any other vegetable.

Mr Dar was speaking at the journalism seminar sponsored by the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines & San Miguel Corporation, SMC. I know the SMC is also a benefactor of the Binhi Awards by the Philippine Agricultural Journalists, so I would like to challenge SMC management to gently but firmly demand that those PH journalists learn & disseminate more about the business of multiple cropping.

What's the one business sense of multiple cropping?
Win some, lose some!517