The Department of Agriculture, DA, was not ready when Senator Cynthia Villar said, on 11 October, according to Coco Manila, during the Senate review of the DA budget ("Senator Cynthia Villar Calls Agriculture Dept 'Crazy' For Doing 'Too Much Research'," ph.news.yahoo.com):
I don't understand your research. How will this benefit farmers? (Do the farmers) like research? They want you to help them. Why is everything research?
In those confrontational 25 words, Senator Villar splashed on the large universal digital screen, so to speak, what we all in science have taken for granted:
That the rest of the world readily understands why we conduct research. Well, it does not understand! And we have only ourselves to blame.
Senator Villar was questioning the P150-million allotment for corn research in the DA budget proposal. And the DA was not ready to explain plainly – a PH habit that has now proven to be dangerous to R&D health!
I remember in the early 1990s when I was a Research Fellow for PhilRice when Santiago R Obien was still Executive Director. One evening, he asked me to edit the whole budget proposal to be submitted the next day to Congress! Well, I am a very patient man, a nitpicker; I gladly went to work on the digital copy. In a little while, I realized that so many millions of pesos were being asked for next year as total PhilRice budget for only a single (1) technology output to be delivered! I knew enough, so I added to the list of technologies – the budget was approved with additional millions (thanks also to Manong Ernesto Maceda).
The point in a budget proposal is:
If you do not list down what outputs you expect from your budget, how do you expect a Senator or a Congressman to know?!
In silence, we assume too much.
We have always been assuming that when we say "R&D" or "research" people understand us what we are talking about, so we do not explain it.
That Senator Villar encounter at the Senate was an alarm, as Secretary Dar himself referred to it as "a wake-up call for the department (to show) how to make research (benefit) the farmers" (words in parentheses I supplied, from a report by Tina Panganiban-Perez, 11 October 2019, "Villar's Comments On DA's Use Of Budget 'A Wakeup Call' – Dar," GMA News Online, gmanetwork.com). Miss Tina says:
Agriculture Secretary William Dar… maintained the importance of research in helping local farmers and the agriculture industry. Dar… said agricultural research and development (R&D) is "critical" in developing, for example, new crop varieties that would increase the production of farmers... "That indicates the key importance of research and development."
100% agree!
Yes Sir, that is exactly what we failed to make the Senate aware of and understand before and during the budget hearing!@517
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