How PH Can Increase Rice Yields And Decrease Critics Of Secretary Of Agriculture William Dar!

I am inclined to think someone is trying to get William Dar’s goat as PH Chief of the Department of Agriculture, DA, to get himself or his candidate to the position, if & when Mr Dar resigns in disgust.

Mr Dar has issued a statement in public (from a DA news release):

He issued the statement to debunk criticisms and perceptions that the current Department of Agriculture (DA) leadership “made the country food import-dependent” despite abundant land and sea resources capable of producing most of the food requirements of 110 million Filipinos.

PH Secretary of Agriculture William Dar has
made the country food import-dependent!?

He must be good at being bad because he has only been Secretary of Agriculture for 14 months!

But no Sir. Since 2007, I have known him only that when Mr Dar is good, he is the best!

Incontrovertible proof is that as Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, based in India, from 2000 to 2014, he team-captained ICRISAT from being dead last to being first among the 15 international centers in the CGIAR Group based in France. (I know because I was his WFH consulting writer in the Philippines.)

Agriculture Secretary William Dar said the Duterte administration continues to put premium on protecting the interests and welfare of the Filipino farmers and fishers, and that sourcing additional food commodities from other countries remains a “last resort” policy.

Importing food is at the expense of everyone.

In fact, Secretary Dar said the country’s dependency on imported food has been increasing during the past 30 years, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

Food security means farmers’ security, fishers’ security.

Our vision of a food-secure and resilient Philippines with prosperous farmers and fisherfolk remains, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and onto the new normal. We will only allow imports to fill in the deficit or what we cannot produce locally.

Mr Dar is an Ilocano like me, and we Ilocanos always try to produce our own first, last.

Let us now pick up one of the 8 paradigms that give meaning to Mr Dar’s “The New Thinking for Agriculture” that he announced when Mr Duterte appointed him Secretary of Agriculture on 05 August 2019:

Modernization.

As an agriculturist myself, I can explain the need to import rice – as a farmer’s son I have observed that up to now Filipino farmers are using century-old methods such as not measuring distances of planting, and sticking 2 or more seedlings per hill, thus increasing plant competition for nutrients, thus decreasing yield.

You don’t need a Secretary of Agriculture
to discourage high yields in rice!

I am now going to blame UP Los Baños for not going into National Extension – not institutionally helping the DA in training farmers to get much more for the same amount of money and the same number of drops of perspiration.

When the Filipino farmers learn to be business-minded, they will increase their yields, increase their incomes, and widen Mr Dar’s smile.@517