Our President started right, William Dar says, as "a food-secure Philippines (was) actually the Vision of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte from his very first day in office" (11 July 2019, "The Power Of Technology And Innovation In Agriculture," Manila Times, manilatimes.net). Mr Dar is referring to Mr Duterte's "10-Point Socioeconomic Agenda" (image from google.com).
That 10-point agenda (see list below) I saw years before, but I ignored it. Now it's educating me, especially #8, which is Mr Dar's topic this time, leading to inclusive development, which I wholeheartedly believe in. Now you know why I have just created this new blog of mine, Journalism for Inclusive Development, or j'include, where you're reading this.
So, j'include! Following the example of St Therese of Lisieux, I choose all.
In order to be faithful to my own inclusive journalism, I am obliged to truly accept all.
There are 10 action items in Mr Duterte's agenda; here's the list from NEDA (neda.gov.ph):
#1. Continue and maintain current macroeconomic policies, including fiscal, monetary, and trade policies.
#2. Institute progressive tax reform and more effective tax collection, indexing taxes to inflation.
#3. Increase competitiveness and the ease of doing business.
#4. Accelerate annual infrastructure spending to account for 5% of GDP, with Public-Private Partnerships playing a key role.
#5. Promote rural and value chain development toward increasing agricultural and rural enterprise productivity and rural tourism.
#6. Ensure security of land tenure to encourage investments, and address bottlenecks in land management and titling agencies.
#7. Invest in human capital development, including health and education systems, and match skills and training to meet the demand of businesses and the private sector.
#8. Promote science, technology, and the creative arts to enhance innovation and creative capacity towards self-sustaining, inclusive development.
#9. Improve social protection programs, including the government’s Conditional Cash Transfer program, to protect the poor against instability and economic shocks.
#10. Strengthen implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law to enable especially poor couples to make informed choices on financial and family planning.
Since I choose all to write about, do I have to be knowledgeable in all? No. I just have to do my knowledge research, do much surfing on the Web. I will consult experts. I will check and counter-check.
Nonetheless, I do have a preferred topic to write about, and it is contained in #8 in the list, like I said: inclusive development.
In fact, I have a love affair with that inclusive paradigm that began in 2010 when the same William Dar, then Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, gave the Inaugural Address for the International Conference on Plant Nutrition held 11-13 August 2010 at the Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh campus of ICRISA, and I published his speech in my blog iCRiSAT Watch; I was then international consulting writer of that international research center in agriculture.
There, Mr Dar talked about inclusive market-oriented development, IMOD. Among other things: With IMOD, you help the farmers market their produce in order to beat The (Marketing) System!517
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