In Agriculture In The Philippines Today, We Have Too Many (Would-Be) Leaders, But Not A Single Man, Or Woman, With Vision! Let’s See!

New Year, New Vision. For my country the Philippines, I am dreaming of a Secretary of Agriculture who not only has believers of his leadership (or potentials) but has Vision for Filipinos include farmers all prosperous. His name is William Dar, whose leadership in the early 2000s had steered ICRISAT from dead last to #1 among the CGIAR member institutes that included IRRI. So? He was selected as ICRISAT DG 3 times!

I’m thinking of “Science with a Filipino farmer’s face,” borrowing from ICRISAT’s vision. Here, at the moment, we have about 3 million poor Filipino farmers – and Secretary of Agriculture Francis Tiu Laurel Jr is “Vision-Less”?

Well, I am not surprised. As the images above both suggest, to “arrive at” or “formulate” or “figure out” is quite a difficult task – and that is why Wo/Men of Vision appear on the horizon literally only once in a blue moon!
(images: top from r.search.yahoo.com, bottom from anouar olh, pexels.com)

Friends and non-friends talk about Experience and everything else including Leadership, but never about Vision – Why?!!! Even the Bible warns about lack of it: “Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint; But he that keepeth the law, happy is he” – Proverbs 29:18 (American Standard Version).

At the very least: The Vision keeps off Division!

Why Vision? New King James Version: “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but happy is he who keeps the law.” NKJV translates the KJV word “Vision” to “Revelation.” The Vision becomes the Revelation of what is to come – if there is no Vision, what remains is Subdivision!

My favorite topic: Agriculture. Without a Vision priorly agreed upon, every leader down below the Secretary of Agriculture will likely promote his/her agenda, hidden or not.

The Vision must be visible to everyone’s inner eye – and approved by all!

PH Agriculture: There are millions of Filipino farmers who are poor, and they have been poor for a long time, for too long. And they are not poor because they are lazy – Filipino farmers are poor because they do not practice good economics!

To simplify:

VHC = VLR.
That is, Very High Costs equals Very Low Returns.

The current method of agriculture in the Philippines is not only VHC = VLR; it is also essentially Contra Environment and Contra Economics – meaning:

(1) The weeds are disposed of – instead of being used as organic fertilizer.

(2) The disposal of the weeds destroys soil microorganisms that enrich the soil!

(3) The chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides used in chemical agriculture (CA) further destroy the soil environment for natural plant growth.

(4) Harvests from CA are somehow against human health and therefor  against community.

(5) CA generates greenhouse gases (GHGs) that generate Climate Change, With their modern farming methods (essentially chemical), farmers are their/our own worst enemies!

Thus: We need a Man of Vision to lead the Filipino farmers from age-old debilitating poverty to modern healthful prosperity – William Dar. Yes, My Hero!@517