William Dar's 8 Paradigms For PH New Thinking For Agriculture

The first duty of a journalist is to know more, to understand if he understands. And so it is that I must ask myself: "Do I understand what Secretary of Agriculture William 'Manong Willie' Dar is saying; to quote from his press statement of 06 August 2019:"

To realize the vision of President Duterte for a food-secure Philippines and to double the income of farmers and fisherfolk, I propose a strategy built around eight paradigms that also make up the "new thinking" for agriculture. The eight paradigms are:

(1) Modernization of agriculture

(2) Industrialization of agriculture

(3) Promotion of exports

(4) Farm consolidation

(5) Roadmap development

(6) Infrastructure development

(7) Higher budget and investments for agriculture, and

(8) Legislative support.

Heavy!

The original Venn diagram image above is from researchgate.net, which I have retouched; I did not tag individual paradigms to dramatize the fact that they all contribute to one and only overall effect – that beautiful yellow sunflower!

The 8 paradigms of Manong Willie are separate petals but all necessary to make the whole blossom, so one petal cannot be sacrificed without harming the whole flower.

That is a paradigm metaphorically.

Now, what is a paradigm technically?

Martyn Shuttleworth & Lyndsay T Wilson define it thus (24 October 2008, "What is a paradigm?" Explorable,explorable.com):

A scientific paradigm is a framework containing all the commonly accepted views about a subject, conventions about what direction research should take and how it should be performed.

In this case, Manong Willie is using the concept of paradigm to signify less research and more development work of the DA. That is to say:

(1) Modernization– We must modernize PH Agriculture; we need more farm mechanization.

(2) Industrialization – We must create separate small, medium and big industries built around the produce & products of our agriculture.

(3) Exports – We must promote more exports such as coconut water, Manong Willie says. I say, for instance, let us promote abaca export, as we have the soil perfect for this crop and we can capitalize on the scientific fact that abaca is the strongest fiber in the world!

(4) Consolidation – Farms must be associated in their operations so that they can enjoy economies of scale and come out with produce and products that are competitive here and abroad.

(5) Roadmaps – The overall PH Agriculture Roadmap should be drawn, and sectoral roadmaps based on that. They will guide us all on what to do, how and where we are supposed to be going.

(6) Infrastructure – PH Agriculture needs more infrastructure not only roads & bridges but, among others, more processing facilities and warehouses.

(7) Budget & Investment – The PH government must invest heavily on agriculture to develop it as a whole; the private sector must participate actively in terms of active investments of its own.

(8) Legislature – The House and the Senate need to get their acts together to support PH Agriculture in terms primarily of additional budget by billions of pesos when necessary.

Necessarily enabling all those 8 paradigms? There are no 2 ways about it!@517

Papers, Presentations & Publications – What An iVirtual Guru Can Teach/Do For You

A guru is a teacher, adviser, or mentor, or all 3. Guro.

The term "Virtual Guru" is already accepted in the digital world; to differentiate, I am calling myself the iVirtual Guru – the attached i referring to any or all of these: Internet-based, intellectual, innovative, interesting, insightful, inclusive, ingenious, incredible.

The Virtual Guru says, "The technology is on your hands" (thevirtualguru.com). That is the ideal, meaning, as iVirtual Guru, if I teach you in using the digital app Office Publisher 2013, you yourself will become adept at it; not at once, but eventually, as I mentor you.

Now, which one can I help you in?

1.  Popular Writing?

2.  Technical Writing?

3.  Popular Editing?

4.  Technical Editing?

5.  Layouting?

6.  Book Production?

7.  Newsletter Production?

8.  Magazine Production?

9.  Technical Journal Production?

10. Indexing?

11. Blogging?

Editing the grammar is included, of course.

Popular writingcan be a column in a paper, lecture, presentation, speech – even an annual report.

Technical writingcan be a paper for publication, report of results of research, or a state-of-the-art review.

Popular editingand technical editing are the same process, except the language used.

Layouting includes formatting text, lines, paragraphs, assigning columns, and designing pages.

Book production starts with the concept and ends with commercial printed copies.

Newsletters and magazines are publications that appear regularly. They differ mostly in theme, content, and authorship (Lifewrite, lifewire.com). Content: A newsletter has articles about one main subject, and one or a few authors. A magazine has multiple subjects, themes, authors, and pictures. Readership: A newsletter is for a special group while a magazine is for a general readership.

From my experience of formal popular writing, starting with the University of the Philippines' College of Agriculture, UPCA, student newsletter Aggie Green & Gold, in 1960 in those typewriter years, up to 1985 in UPCA when I began to use the personal computer with the application WordStar, up to now while I use Microsoft Office 2013 (hoping to purchase Office 2019anytime now), the digital platform has increased my output in quantity and quality many times over!

The virtual world is extra rich if you are not lazy to explore it, if you are not closed minded.

Virtual book production –
In the above image of my Windows 10inadvertent collage, on the right is one of my proposed main titles and covers of the book by Alegria Abellon Javier-Obien: Moving On From Woundedness To Wholeness To Family, which eventually came out as Moving On From Woundedness To Wellness. The iVirtual Guru produces; the author pronounces.

Indexing is an extra-special process for any book, especially non-fiction – nobody does it as well as I do!

Blogging is an eternal source of delight – sharing your thoughts with the world is a happy habit. You can find happiness in blogging if I teach you!

The virtual world has riches you will want to explore further, with me as your iVirtual Guru.

Promise: 1st email advice I give you on any textual material (soft copy) you send is free. frankahilario@gmail.com@517

The Secret To Creative Thinking Leading To Writing? Your iVirtual Guru Knows

Your iVirtual Guru says, "Virtual is the secret of writing!"

0n 21 April 2018, a Saturday, I had the weird & wonderful experience of my Windows 10creating collages on its own, with the exact time and date shown (see image); this magic continued up to 08 May 2018, a Tuesday, for a total of 18 days and 462 images. I do not know how I triggered this phenomenon, but I know, I remember I was changing some settings on Windows 10 for automatic showing of images in the background, and forgot about it. In the next boot, the collages showed up; the image above is the 5th shot I took – which I have here painterized, in order to show somehow the virtual effect. I chose it because I am there, the painterized head on the right on the lower part of the image – also, Frank is 5, he he.

And yes, up there that pie chart looks like a hungry mind, I mean mouth! Hungry but happily waiting for something more to digest. And there is inspiration from Mother Nature. This is magic made in Heaven!

It just flashed on my mind today, Sunday, 25 August 2019,  that virtual collages such as the 400+ in my collection are in fact excellent visuals on how the mind works, or should work, to be truly creative.

You simply release the images in your mind, and your unconscious thinking will create collages of thoughts whose images you can capture in texts. Try it sometime! I have been doing this in the last 45 years!

Of course, I have to teach you how to do exactly that! That is why I am your iVirtual Guru.

I can do that in a proper face-to-face workshop or, as I prefer now, virtual, via email. There is the hidden virtue of dealing with emails – your mind is receptive to whatever inputs come, which is the very virtue of a creative mind.

No Sir, no Ma'am, you cannot question my creativity! I have so far uploaded 5,000 long essays in my more than 100 blogs, each essay a minimum of 1,000 words, each with a proper Beginning, Middle and End – not simply one paragraph laid below another paragraph and so on like layers and layers of leaves in a collecting compost pit.

So today, my new blog Virtual Guru makes it official: I am your iVirtual Guru in creative thinking leading to writing. I maintain that there is no such thing as creative writing – there is no way you can write creatively except if you first think creativel

So, via email, if you want to learn creative thinking to be able to write on any subject, write me: frankahilario@gmail.com. Assuredly, my first complete email advice is free on any manuscript no matter how long – then you decide whether to engage me as your Virtual Guru or not. No hard feelings if you do not.

Just make sure you know or understand what you're missing if you do not engage your iVirtual Guru!@517

Agriculture Secretary And Batangas Governor – A Handshake For Rice Farmers

The above image is from a Facebook sharing of William " Manong Willie" Dar, with this note:

Had a meeting with Batangas Governor Hermilando Mandanas today. We agreed together to rally the Regional Development Councils (RDCs) of all regions to help and (request) all provincial governors to mobilize and appeal to the traders and millers… to buy at the right price the palay being harvested this season… Another mechanism is for the big cooperatives in the provinces to also procure palay at the right price. The provincial governments can have an agreement with NFA so additional budget can be invested thru NFA (to) procure, mill, and market the rice. Better yet if the provincial government can procure, mill, and market the rice. This is the time to help the rice farmers!

Why choose Governor Mandanas as farmer ally of the new DA? I like what I'm reading about Mr Mandanas – like, he is the Chair of Region IV-A (Calabarzon) Regional Development Council (RDC) of NEDA. As far as I can see, Mr Mandanas is an excellent choice of Manong Willie as a province-based local government champion of farmers for them to be able to receive their just rewards out of their rice harvests from the merchants.

Even as a public servant, Mr Mandanas knows business. He has a UP Masters in Business Administration and graduated with honors (Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org). From 1963 to 1985, he worked with many private companies in various capacities. From 1995 to 2004, he was Governor of Batangas and became President of the Federation of Regional Development Councils of the Philippines. All those data from Wikipedia tell me Mr Mandanas is an excellent choice as a province-based ally of the DA in pursuing the better interests of farmers.

Manong Willie's Facebook sharing (above) says he and Mr Mandanas agreed "to rally the (RDCs) of all regions to help and (request) all provincial governors to mobilize and appeal to the traders and millers… to buy at the right price the palay." The National Food Authority, NFA, has also been recruited to help the farmers handle their rice. The cooperatives are also encouraged to help process & market the produce.

This combined appeal is unprecedented. No Secretary of Agriculture in the Philippines has done it before. An RDC is a regional unit of the National Economic & Development Authority, NEDA – I believe this is NEDA's first too.

Well, our farmers need all the help they can get!

I have been following the career of Manong Willie ever since he became the Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, based in India, in 01 January 2000, and retired on 31 December 2014. I was ICRISAT international consulting writer 2007-2014, so I know ICRISAT is farmer-oriented. In 2010, ICRISAT came up with the strategy called Inclusive Market-Oriented Development, IMOD. With IMOD, ICRISAT actively assisted the farmers in marketing their produce, to avoid being taken advantage of by merchants.

Manong Willie knows that you cannot leave the farmers alone especially at harvest time!@517

PH Old Vs New Journalism – Drama Vs Development

That is drama – the image from US Dave Webb Creative, davidmarketing.net.

This is drama – the first paragraph of PH news report by Ralf Rivas, rappler.com)::

Pigs are dying because of an unidentified disease. Raisers are reportedly making sausages out of the infected hogs. The Department of Agriculture holds a media briefing, but hardly offers answers.

That is from Rappler, the Truth-seeking online Media: 3 strikes and you are out! That is:

(1) Scary – You are frightening people, because "pigs are dying" implies that a great many pigs are dying – in fact you do not know how many because the DA is not telling you! For safety concerns; if people knew how many and where, kibitzers and reporters will flock there and likely spread more the disease-causing organisms.

(2) Incorrect – "Unidentified disease" is notcorrect – the DA does not yet know whether it is a single or multiple of diseases causing those deaths, the number of deaths they do not want to reveal, to avoid panic.

(3) Sensationalism – "Raisers are reportedly making sausages out of the infected hogs" is making people evil without checking facts – "reportedly" is not good enough; in fact, it is bad enough!

(4) Equivocating – "Hardly offers answers" – Why do you complain? Why are you after the numbers and not the consequences when those "numbers" are revealed to the public?

The point is: Do you want to make a good report or not?! Are you for development or not? Are you an enemy of the leaders of the DA or not? Do you think that if you bring out the worst in the DA leadership, this is best for the country?

That is immature journalism that never grew up!

Whatever kind of journalism you studied (or not), you fail the Rotary 4-Way Test:

1.      Is it the TRUTH?

2.      Is it FAIR to all concerned?

3.      Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?

4.      Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Are you trying to scare people to increase public attention to your Media?
Or are you doing journalism to help develop your Country?

Development journalism is helping your Country grow so that more people can share in the growth big and small. 
Drama journalism is helping only your Media grow!

Drama journalism is sensationalism, that is, media growth journalism, at the expense of the people.

Development journalism is educational, not sensational, that is, social growth journalism, in the name of the people.

Drama journalism excuses you from finding out more about the subject. It is refusal to learn more than you already know. It is cultivating prejudices to the credit of your media at the expense of your audience.

Development journalism is learning more about your subject so that you can say more about it intelligently. Not only that, if you provide more details and connect more dots, your journalism becomes more interesting – it informs people as well as delights them.

I am almost 79 as I write & blog this on my own. Even if you are an old dog, you can learn new tricks!@517

Want To Learn Intelligent Communication? WriteD

WriteD. 

The name of the workshop I'm thinking aloud for communicators of the Department of Agriculture (DA) with new Secretary, a Man of Science, William Dollente Dar. The name WriteD is meant to intrigue. The i is to signify inspiration, intelligence, intimate knowledge.

WriteD is memorable because it looks wrong as written and sounds wrong in tense; it should be written as, yes, Written, right? Yes and No. The name WriteD is actually an acronym: Writers for Development. This is a workshop to learn to write creatively pushing for National Development. 

I now define national development differently & practically, as this:

National development is the input/output of any program, project or initiative that redounds to the public good, being all of these at the same time: technically feasible, economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially acceptable – in one word, sustainable.

You need Science for National Development; so, to help Secretary Dar, to be able to "market" the idea of science for development, we need creative writers who understand how agriculture can help in bringing progress to everyone.

I must emphasize it, and it must be remembered, that Manong Willie, a title he prefers to be called, for familiarity as well as formality, has humble beginnings; he is a simple man but is also a learned man, steeped in both Science and Development. If we writers want to help him help our country, we have to know where he is coming from!

His formal background is the Science of Agriculture and related fields. He has a BS in Agricultural Education as well as an MS in Agronomy, both from the Benguet State University, and a PhD in Horticulture from the University of the Philippines Los Baños. 

His major & very long experience as a manager is also Science – he became the Director General (DG) of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a sister agency of IRRI in the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). He was DG of ICRISAT for 3 terms, that is, for 15 years, from 01 January 2000 to 31 December 2014, definitely a CGIAR distinction. 

I know because I was international consulting writer of ICRISAT from January 2007 to December 2014. Based in Manila, to be able to write creatively and with credibility, I had to do my research diligently, if digitally. 

He has also been PH Secretary of Agriculture, under Erap; nonetheless, his language is steeped in Science. Here is a very short list of that universe:

1.  artificial intelligence

2.  balanced nutrient management

3.  climate change

4.  competitiveness

5.  countryside heroes

6.  crop diversification

7.  data analytics

8.  digital and disruptive technologies

9.  drone agriculture

10. entrepreneurship

11. farm consolidation & mechanization

12. financial literacy

13. food security vs sufficiency

14. grassroots-level innovation

15. inclusive development vs inclusive growth

16. paradigm

17. productivity & profitability (Ani at Kita)

18. research and development

19. resiliency

20. sustainability

21. value chain.

He calls himself a Servant Leader. Servants must follow the leader – understand his language, not simply mouth it, in order to support him!@517

On The New DA, Rappler Breaks My Heart As Ralf Rivas Raises Hell, Not Hope!

THiNK! PH Media, you are our own contrabida in agriculture! 

For me as journalist, this is a very happy day – and you mediamen have just made me very sad.

The ego-filling very positive words I have just received from a reader of my latest essay online are in stark contrast with the ego-deflating very negative words on the actions of the new Department of Agriculture, DA, now led by Secretary of Agriculture William Dar, that I have just read on media! 

Reacting to my essay "Editor In Chief, Yes! Approaching 79 Years Of Age, How May I Help You?" Creativity Works! (24 August 2019, Creativity Works! icreativityworks.blogspot.com), Jovita Corpuz says:

Congratulations, Manong! I like the way you write about science and technology – just like an interesting novel that puts the reader excited about the story and will read to the end!

Those are phrases that please. Now to the phrases that displease, to say the least. Today, I have just read some news items on an unidentified disease causing some mortality on swine in place/s also unidentified in the Philippines.


There are plenty of backyard piggeries in the Philippines (above image of healthy suckling pigs in a backyard farm is from iFranchise Philippines, ifranchise.ph)

Now, the title of this one should scare you to death! This is from Ralf Rivas of Rappler (21 August 2019, rappler.com): "Agriculture Department Evades Questions As Pigs Die In Luzon."  The very first words are:

Pigs are dying because of an unidentified disease. Raisers are reportedly making sausages out of the infected hogs. The Department of Agriculture holds a media briefing, but hardly offers answers.

With those 30 words, Miss Rappler and Mr Rivas, you want to bring down the whole new leadership of the Department of Agriculture?!

At the same time scare all of us pork-eaters out of our mouths?!

This is journalism that makes me very unhappy, the pursuit of Truth that makes me cry. 

I have in fact been writing on this unhealthy attitude of journalists American and Filipino in the last 2 years. Here are 2 essay of mine: (a) 06 February 2017, "I, Teacher. Thinking How To Teach The US Media How To Think!" Creativity Works! icreativityworks.blogspot.com; and (b) 08 March 2019, "Maria Ressa & Kit Tatad – Why Truth Will Not Set You Free," Creativity Works! icreativityworks.blogspot.com).

Now, this is how US and Philippine media should THiNK!

T – Is it the Truth?
H – Is it Helpful?
I – Is it Inspiring?
N – Is it Necessary?
K – Is it Kind?

T.H.I.N.K.!

That is how Zig Ziglar puts it, all you people especially Media.

What Mr Rivas along with Rappler is doing is coming out with stories that cannot even pass the Rotary 4-Way Test:  

Is it the truth?
Is it fair to all concerned?
Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

No Media is above the law of being truthful and being helpful and being inspiring and being necessary and being kind all at the same time!@517