23/09/2019

Paradigm Shift – Team Philippines Champions The Poor Farmers


The simplest paradigm shift is from thinking negative to thinking positive!

The paradigm shifts
from
leaving the PH Department of Agriculture, DA, alone to work out positive results of the rice crisis,
to
LGUs, SCUs, private sector including NGOs, religious groups and farmer leaders joining forces into Team Philippines not only to survive the crisis but to triumph into inclusive development of whole villages in the countryside from Aparri to Jolo.

"Makiisa Sa Magsasaka" (Be One With The Farmer) and "Support Our Rice Farmers" are good slogans, but not good enough; I will give you just one reason – our farmers produce rice that is not competitive with imported rice; compare now – PH P12/kilo, Vietnam P8/kilo, Thailand P6/kilo. With our higher cost of production, with the cheaper imports, we are losers in our own country!

How to support our rice farmers intelligently?
Be holistic and, among other things, teach them to reduce their costs!

In the top image, I show the upper half of the first book I wrote that was published by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, with the title "Team ICRISAT Champions The Poor." My book was published in 2008; I was then an international consulting writer for ICRISAT. The Director General, DG, of ICRISAT at that time was the same man who is the new PH Secretary of Agriculture: William Dar/Manong Willie/Servant-Leader.

I covered ICRISAT from January 2007 to December 2014, when Manong Willie retired, so I know the Institute's history of its rise from the bottom heap to top honors. When our Team Captain became DG of ICRISAT in 2000, the Institute was dead last among the 15 international centers in the group CGIAR, of which IRRI is a member. With their Team Captain, ICRISAT rose to #1 by winning awards after awards – encouraged and enlightened by their Servant-Leader. Nothing beats teamwork with a first-class Team Captain!

So, "Team ICRISAT" is a powerful paradigm to be emulated by Team Philippines. If we leave the DA alone to "do its job mandated by the Constitution," the DA will not succeed.

I know the terms paradigmand paradigm shift are unclear to many people. The simplest equivalent word that I can think of, the way our Team Captain Philippines uses the word paradigmis guide, that is, guide to thought and guide to action.

When Manong Willie speaks, be very sure that he is coming from any of those 8 paradigms. He came up with those 8 even before he was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte as the new Secretary of Agriculture because that is how his mind works – in wholes. Those 8 paradigms are separate but yet make a whole package of sources of initiatives to bring "Masaganang Ani at Mataas na Kita" (Plenteous Grains & Plentiful Gains, my new translation). (Oh yes, on those paradigms I have produced a literary-literal ebook, in Paradigms Lost, in Paradigms Regained, lower half of above image, a free copy of which you can email me for: frankahilario@gmail.com.)

Let us be w/holistic and be Team Philippines!@517

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