William Dar Honored By ICRISAT. With His Servant Leadership, The Indians Knew What’s & Who’s Good For Them & Kept Him Director General For 15 Years! This Filipino With His Vision Of “Science With A Human Face.”

Yes, my favorite PH Secretary of Agriculture is, and will always be, William Dar, who was the Servant Leader of the India-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) who brought ICRISAT from dead last (kulelat) to #1 among CGIAR’s 15 international agricultural research agencies that include/d formidable IRRI.

What has Dar wrought? Remembering, ICRISAT honored its outstanding Director General (DG) on 17 Feb 2017, in its headquarters in India, by renaming the “ICRISAT Agriculture Innovation Platform” facility into the “William D Dar Agribusiness Centre” – this is honoring international leadership!

What is my credibility writing about ICRISAT? I was Writer From Home for ICRISAT 2007 to 2014, publishing the blog “iCRiSAT Watch“ – and ICRISAT published my articles into 7 warm image-filled books in my name.

ICRISAT was non-performing among the 15 CGIAR agencies when Mr Dar became its DG in Jan 2000. Immediately, Mr Dar provided impetus for greatness with his servant leadership by masterminding an original battle cry:

Science with a human face.

“When the going gets tough, the top gets going!” (my revision of the popular American proverb.) This time, I’m referring to ICRISAT; with its Filipino Servant Leader DG for 15 years, ICRISAT rose from dead last (kulelat) to #1 among 15 international agricultural research agencies that included Philippine-based IRRI. Beat that!

Today, “Science with a human face” is what not only Philippine agriculture needs but the whole human race needs.

Here are examples of “Science without a human face” and ignoring Climate Change –

Banning exports of chemical fertilizers.
Continuing to rely on fossil fuel for energy.
Country paying lip service to The Kyoto Protocol.
Millions of farmers relying mostly on inorganic fertilizers.
Millions of farmers remaining mostly poor.

ANN says, in PH “Basically, around 5.5 million farmers and 4.6 million fishers are poor” (Author Not Named, 14 Jan 2021, Special Area for Agricultural Development, saad.da.gov.ph). That translates to 10 million poor families relying on agriculture for their lives.

Any Secretary of Agriculture must always remember those poor! In past years, so many people have assumed the position of PH Secretary of Agriculture – but the poor farmers & fishers have remained poor.

And today, we have an agriculturist (PhD Horticulture) as Secretary of Agriculture who has personal experience of poverty! He comes from a poor family in Santa, Ilocos Sur; his parents could not send him to high school; nevertheless, one of his uncles provided the funds for his education – thank God for kind-heart kin!

“Serve the people” was China’s slogan under Communist Mao Zedong. Mr Dar’s mantra for ICRISAT “Science with a human face” means that science must serve the poorpeople especially. If you have not thought about it yet, you should: William Dar should be the succeeding Secretary of Agriculture of the Philippines. Those 3.5 years have not been enough for Secretary Dar to lead millions of farmers from poverty to prosperity!@517