Happy Father’s Day, Secretary Of Agriculture William Dar!


Above, from Facebook the caption reads: “DA Urges LGUs, Farmers Groups, Private Sector To Help Transform Phl Agri Sector[1]” (21 May 2021, Frances May Ramos, DA.gov.ph). As Secretary, that is how William Dar is behaving as the Father of Philippine Agriculture today!

Mr Secretary, you have an archipelagic-family size now. You have come a very long way. From 1999 to 2014, as Director General, you were the Virtual Father of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) based in India. From dead last, with your fathership, you brought ICRISAT to #1 among 15 international agricultural research centers under the umbrella of the CGIAR, including IRRI based in the Philippines. You did it via your Team Captainship. Your Family is your Team.

Today, you have been the Servant Leader of Philippine Agriculture since 05 August 2019. You brought in with you what you called “The New Thinking for Agriculture” with 8 paradigms to build a new intelligent structure for national development via agriculture & fisheries:

As the news cited in the above image says, you called “for a sustained and stronger ‘public-private-people’ partnership to lead the transformation of Philippine agriculture and respond to the pandemic and other challenges.”

The two-day (NFSS) summit brought together dozens of key agri-fishery industry players, resource persons, economists, and national and local leaders, and more than 6,000 participants at the online workshops, in a blended physical and virtual platform.

A concerned huge family meeting!

One of the individual members of your Huge Family, former National Economic and Development Authority Director General and Socio-Economic Planning Secretary Cielito F Habito said during one of the NFSS plenary sessions: “Agriculture is too important to be left alone to the Department of Agriculture.” Yes, and that is why your fathering Philippine Agriculture highly values, in your words, “public-private-people partnership.”

You yourself said:

Armed with the updated commodity industry roadmaps, we can encourage and convince the private sector, including interested foreign companies, to invest in the country’s agri-fisheries sector.

As the Father of a Huge, Huge Family, you have good, abiding members; you have bright-thinking members – you also have recalcitrant members who listen only to themselves.

You said:

The perfect storm of 2020 has demonstrated the agriculture sector’s resilience, and reducing poverty remains an enormous multi-sectoral challenge. There is hunger because most people, due to the pandemic, loss of jobs and livelihood, cannot simply buy food, despite (the fact that) food is available.

If this phenomenon is not understood and appreciated by detractors, they will always blame the Department of Agriculture. We beg to disagree, as hunger and poverty (are problems) that we have been addressing, even before the Duterte administration.

I want to emphasize the fact: “Before Duterte.” Your family members are some big guys themselves, difficult to either sway or dissuade – the local government units (LGUs), farmer groups, private sector – but they are family, and life must go on as one Huge Family.

Nobody is perfect. You insist on the Whole-Of-Nation Approach. That makes you perfect as the Father of Philippine Agriculture today!@517


[1]https://www.da.gov.ph/da-urges-lgus-farmers-groups-private-sector-to-help-transform-phl-agri-sector/?fbclid=IwAR2kjEW66h0g18wOo1RNGQPQKPLLKyr-N1HAKB3zTKGrsIgFNguvOvNN8AE

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