PH Agriculture is history. Can this man save it?
The Filipino with the Indian turban is William Dar, Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, based in India. The tarp on the lectern says:
ICRISAT
is
Outstanding Again
Team ICRISAT
is
Great!
is
Outstanding Again
Team ICRISAT
is
Great!
William Dar, Team Captain of ICRISAT, is Outstanding Again. The Team is Great Again!
When Mr Dar became Director General of ICRISAT in January 2000, we Ilocanos would have called ICRISAT jokingly summa cum maude, "maude" meaning "last" ha, ha. Smartly, he looked at himself as Team Captain and all ICRISAT management as a team working together as champions of science. So it happened that ICRISAT succeeded in outshining the others in the CGIAR network of centers including the famous International Rice Research Institute, IRRI that brought the world the Green Revolution that, it has been said, saved the world from hunger.
The above image is what introduces Chapter 26, pages 148-154, of my ICRISAT book titled The Smart Revolution and subtitled ICRISAT Partners In Research For Development published by ICRISAT in 2009. Based in Manila, I was then on my 3rd year as international consulting writer of this center.
On page 150, it states that in 2000, Mr Dar captained his team to dedicate itself to:
(1) Transforming watersheds into wealth generators for the poor
(2) Optimizing the use of scarce soil nutrients
(3) Reducing costs and minimizing hazards of pesticide use
(4) Opening the doors of biotechnology
(5) Networking, and
(6) Focusing on women.
That's too much science; let us leave them to the scientists to explain later.
Back to Team ICRISAT. When Mr Dar came in, he sold ICRISAT this slogan:
Science with a human face.
Let me now quote myself in that Chapter 26, page 150:
Science with a human face. Five short words and William Dar revolutionizes modern science by saying them – and doing them. And so I see Science as people, not process; science as man, not method; science as product, not potential; science as servant, not master. (I know William Dar refers to himself as Servant Leader, not separating faith from facts, religion from science. You cannot separate your heart from your head.)
And what happened to Team ICRISAT? It won awards in the years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 – year after year!
Apart from knowing he was the international award-winning Team Captain of ICRISAT, now retired, why support William Dar as the new PH Secretary of Agriculture? 3 things:
(1) Empathy with the poor.
He came from a poor family who could not afford to send him to high school.
He came from a poor family who could not afford to send him to high school.
(2) Educational background in agriculture.
He obtained his BS and MS from Benguet State University and his PhD in Horticulture from UP Los Baños.
He obtained his BS and MS from Benguet State University and his PhD in Horticulture from UP Los Baños.
(3) Previous experience as Secretary of Agriculture.
This may be a surprise, but under President Erap, Mr Dar as Secretary of Agriculture captained the Philippines to its highest growth rate in agriculture ever!
This may be a surprise, but under President Erap, Mr Dar as Secretary of Agriculture captained the Philippines to its highest growth rate in agriculture ever!
You cannot quarrel with successES, can you?!@517
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