William Dar, My Favorite Secretary Of Agriculture, Now Champions “Regenerative Agriculture” – Via Organic Farming, We Should Have Our P20/kg Rice Within 6 Months!

On Twitter (above),Pres Ferdinand “BBM” Marcos Jr says, “Palapit na tayo doon sa ating pangarap na P20.” (“We are nearing our dream of P20.”) BBM made the promise of P20/kg rice for consumers during this year’s presidential campaign. 7 months later, he is still not saying how exactly he will do it. He is keeping secret his Vision & Mission to bring it about; “P20/kg rice” is Mission –what’s his Vision?

I believe what BBM needs to understand “Servant Leadership,” and that will take a long time. The wisest thing he can do right now is appoint as Secretary of Agriculture a proven and award-winning Servant Leader – I am thinking of William Dar, who was appointed by Pres Rodrigo Roa Duterte. Don’t tell me PRRD has the management skill that BBM lacks?!

Mr Dar has just received the landmark “1^st MS Swaminathan Global Leadership Award For Sustainable Development 2022” – the awarding was done in New Delhi 10 Nov 2022 during the India International Agro Trade and Technology Fair-AgroWorld2022 organized by the Indian Chamber for Food and Agriculture. The honor given that Global Leadership Award comes with a cash prize of 1M Indian rupees (US$12,244).

In his Manila Timescolumn of 17 Nov 2022, “It's Time To Consider Regenerative Agriculture” (Manila Times, manilatimes.net), the honoree Mr Dar himself says:

Being the first awardee [of the prize] named after Dr Swaminathan, I owe it to him to champion regenerative agriculture as one of the solutions to level up local and global food production.

(Welcome to the RA Club, Sir!)

Mr Dar says:

In my previous columns, I cited one of the pitfalls of the Green Revolution that started in the 1960s, specifically making farmers dependent on agro-chemicals.

Not his fault, but what BBM acting as Secretary of Agriculture is overseeing/overlooking today is the dependence of Filipino farmers on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, mostly if not all imported. There are 2 major objections in the use of those chemicals in agriculture – one, they are expensive; two, they generate greenhouse gases (GHGs) that generate Climate Change! (I have been writing about GHGs for years.)

Also, mono-cropping became the norm from the time the Green Revolution took root.

I myself don’t understand why international IRRI and local PhilRice have not graduated from Chemical Agriculture! Why have not those rice scientists seen, for instance, that Organic Agriculture is the single stone that a little boy called David can throw at two Goliaths at the same time: Farmer Poverty and Climate Change!?

What Secretary of Agriculture BBM can do is arrange that the Department of Agriculture (DA) produce and distribute to the farmers, on loan, organic fertilizer that they need to harvest high yields of rice at low costs (given market price of the fertilizer) so that the farmers can earn excellent incomes even if they sold their rice at P20/kg.

At the same time, the use of organic fertilizer results in zero GHGs – that will help defeat Climate Change!@517