IMONDA SIR – A New Message To Greet The New Secretary Of Agriculture, William Dar

Today, Tuesday, 13 August 2019, is about 120 days to the end of the year; I will celebrate my 79th birthday next month, and I am praying that God will want me to live longer, as He promises in Genesis 6:3 (New International Version):

Then the Lord said, "My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years."

Now, I celebrate today the official turnover of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture from Emmanuel Piñol of Cotabato to William Dar of Ilocos Sur, that is, from a development journalist intrepid to a science manager extraordinaire.

Also, I celebrate with a new mantra for creative journalism:

IMONDA SIR
Ideal Media Outputs Over New Department Of Agriculture's Appropriate Aims, Approaches & Activities Apropos Science & Information Revitalization

That's from an original aboriginal, an Ilocano.

I happen to know Mr Dar, another Ilocano, an idealist and a realist, an aspirer and an achiever. That is because, from January 2007 to December 2014, I was international consulting writer for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, based in India, when he was Director General 2000 to 2014. How well did he perform? He brought ICRISAT from dead last to first among 15 international centers in the CGIAR group that includes the prestigious IRRI.

On my part, how well did I do my job? ICRISAT published 7 books of mine. You can access, for instance, my very first book, Team ICRISAT Champions The Poor here, ICRISAT Library, Open Access Repository, oar.icrisat.org.

Pertinently, I note here that in the printed version of that first book, there was a small CD inside the back pocket. How time flies! Today, we have the Team Captain of ICRISAT as the Team Captain of our own DA.

Now then, I have no doubt that given the Sad State of PH Agriculture today, Mr Dar will rise to the challenge and lead it towards achieving the multi-intersecting goals of "increased productivity, profitability, competitiveness, sustainability and resilience" as listed in his Manila Times column on 04 August 2019, "The 'New Thinking' For Agriculture" 4th of 4 parts (manilatimes.net).

I go back to IMONDA before I interrupted myself. I'm offering it as a guide to development journalists. Well, how do I envision to bring about my own IMONDA?

As a guide, I will look for the DA Roadmap for PH agriculture. In any case, with or without a Roadmap, my output should always consider any DA program, project, activity, initiative toward any combination of the William Darian goals of productivity, profitability, competitiveness, sustainability, resilience.

Is that too much to ask of any PH development journalist?

In case it is, my birthday gift is to hold, for free, a one-day DA-sponsored workshop on creative journalism. That's for IMONDA. I will teach how to work with scientific terms with a laptop and Internet connection. That's for SIR. (If interested: frankahilario@gmail.com)

All in all, these times begin the good news of PH agriculture!@517