People & Social Media To Jumpstart PH Agriculture

BusinessMirror Editors say (26 December 2018 , businessmirror.com.ph):

Philippine agriculture is dying because national leaders for the longest time have done nothing to help this sector and make it grow. As a result, millions of farmers who depend on the land for livelihood can’t get out of poverty.

Frank A Hilario says: Think locally, act globally. Especially in the realm of leading and learning more about agriculture for business, food and pleasure. Now, here are 2 things to revive & kickstart PH agriculture:

(1) Appoint Global Manager to Jumpstart PH Agriculture

I say for President Rodrigo Duterte to push-start PH agriculture, he will have to have William Dar as the head of the Department of Agriculture, DA. Why? Mr Dar has his aggie Roadmap; knows his Science; knows how to Inspire Teamwork within an organization; and knows Social Media. He is himself an original thinker in agriculture. He is a world-class science manager, having been Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, based in India, for 15 years, from January 2000 to December 2014.

Not to forget: Mr Dar has been PH Secretary of Agriculture and he caused the highest aggie growth in PH history.

(2) Construct Global Manager of Knowledge to Jumpstart PH Agriculture

Inspired by Mr Dar's own social media suggestion in 2003 he submitted to Philippine Rice Research Institute, PhilRice, and called the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture, OpAPA, I teacher, science writer and an original aboriginal (Ilocano, like Mr Dar), am proposing that the DA pursue the building of a digital library called Geography of Knowledge (Go Knowledge), spreading knowledge fast & easy.

Go Knowledge, global manager of science & folk wisdom I am recommending to bump-start my country's agriculture, has this user interface that works much like your touchscreen laptop or cellphone does, as plainly suggested by the image above  (from Can Stock Photo, canstockphoto.com). With Go Knowledge icons, you tap an icon and more icons and/or text underneath that one appears. And so on, until you get what you want, or like. Think of it as a bigger cellphone for knowledge.

Actually, I already proposed Go Knowledge (except the name) while I worked briefly for PhilRice in 2003 and when I learned of Mr Dar's OpAPA project for PH agriculture. I even wrote a digital book detailing how to construct this global knowledge manager – Geography Of Knowledge (198 pages) – a digital copy of which I still have. Go Knowledge is to be programmed in a language a high school student can understand (English first, later translated to Ilocano, Bisaya and Tagalog languages).

And now I go back to Mr Dar, as his beloved ICRISAT has the ExploreItwebsite (exploreit.icrisat.org). It says right there on the homepage: "In today's world, the value of information usually increases with the number of people who share it." Share it fast and easy.

To summarize. Today, PH agriculture needs 2 global managers:

Global Manager of the Department of Agriculture: William Dollente Dar.

Global Manager of Knowledge for PH Agriculture. FAH's Go Knowledge!517