A New Look At “The New Thinking for Agriculture” By Secretary Of Agriculture William Dar

For drama, look at the above image that I reproduced after reversing & inverting “New Thinking For Agriculture” and the “8 Paradigms” that contribute to its actualization. With the new thinking, the mind of Secretary of Agriculture William Dollente Dar, WDD, has to be able to discern things out at any order even as he goes around the country serving his people.

So, how busy are the mind, hands and feet of WDD? Let’s see. Here are random pickings from WDD’s Facebook webpage:

30-Sept-2020: WDD leads inauguration and turnover of Bado Dangwa-Guilayon Farm-to-Market Road in Tabuk City, Kalinga under the Philippine Rural Development Project.

30-Sept-2020: WDD visits Tarlac JelFarm, which will ship about 5 tons of okra daily as the harvest season begins. Come peak season, with full blast operations, it can ship an average of 13-15 tons everyday. 14 barangays of Tarlac and about 300 farmers are involved.

30-Sept-2020: Department of Agriculture, DA Regional Field Office 2 distributes at least 50 bags of Open Pollinated Variety white corn seeds to farmers of Santo Tomas, Isabela as prelude to farm consolidation and clustering.

01-Oct-2020: WDD formally turns over P24-million Small Water Impounding Project to Arapaap Small Water Irrigation System Association on September 30, 2020 in Allacapan, Cagayan.

05-Oct-2020: DA says buying price for dry paddy rice reaches P19 per kilo, at par with the maximum buying price set by the National Food Authority.

08-Oct-2020: San Fernando City, La Union – P36,105,000 already released by the DA to backyard hog raisers affected by the African Swine Fever in the region. Involving 1,069 beneficiaries, 7,221 swine head.

08-Oct-2020: WDD reiterates benefits of Rice Tariffication Law and Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, saying that these will help the rice sector regain strength and resiliency by increasing productivity and reducing production cost.

08-Oct-2020: In the “Food Security in the Subic-Clark Economic Corridor Webinar,” WDD explains underlying factors why PH farmers are not competitive and earning enough. “First, our farmers remain individualistic, unorganized and thus are not linked directly to markets. Second, our farmlands are small and fragmented. The saving-link is to organize them into cooperatives, and thereafter consolidate and cluster their farms to attain economies of scale, and thus be competitive. We will assist them to partner with big business and venture jointly into food value chain enterprises.”

08-Oct-2020: WDD and Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte discuss the establishment of the National Urban Agriculture Research and Learning Center hosted by the City.

The above are selected actualizations of portions of the 8 paradigms of “The New Thinking for Agriculture:”

(1)   Modernization

(2)   Industrialization

(3)   Promotion of exports

(4)   Consolidation of small- and medium-sized farms

(5)   Infrastructure development

(6)   Higher budget & investment

(7)   Legislative support

(8)   Roadmap development.

In short, thinking national and acting local simultaneously, Secretary of Agriculture William Dar must be wakeful all the time.

Something that bothers me as Mr Dar pushes for “The New Thinking for Agriculture” is I see no active journalistic support by the Philippine Agricultural Journalists, PAJ. Can I help, PAJ?@517