“The Big Hole” As Viewed By Cielito F Habito, “The Big Whole” As Viewed By William D Dar – PH DA’s “Seven Deadly Sins” As Seen By CFH, “Seven Deadly Scenes” As Seen By WDD.

This essay has been prompted by the reactions to my previous essay, “Why Not ‘Masagana 300’ & P20/kg Rice Under President BBM?! Under His Father, President Ferdinand ‘FM’ Marcos’ ‘Masagana 99’ Miracle Rice Program, We Enjoyed Miracle Rice!” (15 June 2022, Towards A New Eden, Blogspot.com). This is one small lesson in being creative.

We all can, we have to learn from the British wit Oscar Wilde:

Between the optimist and the pessimist,
The difference is droll.
The optimist sees the doughnut,
The pessimist the hole!
(images: Donut from BakerBoy.com, business.facebook.com; CFH from Inquirer.net, WDD from DA.gov.ph)

And so, this is one little lesson in creative writing even as you insist on critical writing!

Staring at PH Agriculture and seeing the hole rather than the doughnut 7 times is what comes out as “The Seven Deadly Sins Of The DA” that Cielito F Habito sees (14 June 2022, “Seven Deadly Sins,” Inquirer.net, opinion.inquirer.net). Mr Habito commits a lethal error that too many journalists and/or opinion sayers commit, what I call “The Donut Hole Effect” – from Wilde’s doughnut.

Essentially, as I said in my previous essay (cited above), Mr Habito was saying that current Secretary of Agriculture William Dar, in his 2+ years headship of the DA, has ignored any number of the “Seven Deadly Sins” and therefore must be replaced.

Here are Mr Habito’s “Seven Deadly Sins” (with my editing):

The DA (1) persisted with a largely top-down centralized approach to managing the sector… (2) unduly obsessed with rice self-sufficiency… (3) inordinately focused on farm production… (4) largely structured and organized according to commodities rather than according to key central functions it must fulfill… (5) relied primarily on protecting our farmers… (6) failed to respond to the fragmentation of our farms from agrarian reform and generational partition… and (7) neglected to work with public and private financial institutions to ensure farmers ample access to working capital…

Granting all those 7… Mr Habito does not know/mention that even before he officially came in as Secretary of Agriculture, already Mr Dar was brandishing his “The New Thinking For Agriculture” in The Manila Times issue of 04 July 2019 (manilatimes.net). [Now then, the declaration of The New Thinking with its “8 paradigms” was Independence Day to me!]

What Mr Habito could have done was in the form of repeated questions of
“Why was the DA?”
(1) persistent with a largely top-down centralized approach to managing the sector?
(2) unduly obsessed with rice self-sufficiency?
(3) inordinately focused on farm production?
(4) structured according to commodities rather than key central functions?
(5) primarily relying on protecting farmers and closing domestic markets to foreign competitors?
(6) unable to consolidate and cluster farms?
(7) unable to work with public and private financial institutions?

Unfair. What has the current Secretary of Agriculture been doing? Not mentioning Mr Dar even once was in effect saying he did/he has done nothing at all!@517