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Friday, March 29, 2024

Finally, hope

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"The new Agriculture secretary needs competent and well-intentioned people to assist him to overturn many years of lethargy."

In the long-parched desert of the state of Philippine agriculture, President Rodrigo Duterte’s appointment of William Dar as the new head of the Department of Agriculture comes as a downpour of hope.  Finally, the career officers and employees of the DA are heaving a sigh of  relief.

In the conferences our office has had with mid-level officials of various DA agencies, we could feel the demoralization brought about by a lack of direction, not to mention the appointment of persons in key positions who seem to be taking the longest time to pass the learning curve.

In the previous administration, the DA was labelled derisively as “Quezon Institute” by career officials and staff.  Quezon here refers to the southern Tagalog province from whence came the secretary appointed by the previous president, who brought in a gaggle of province-mates, some qualified, some not.

And even before “Quezon Institute” moved from España Extension to the corner of Visayas Avenue and Quezon Memorial Circle, there were the corruption issues hounding the department, from Joc-Joc’s fertilizer scam to the now mercifully defunct Quedancor and its swine-lending scandals to the country, causing an unprecedented spike in rice prices worldwide.

To be fair, the DA is much too big,  with more than 40 agencies to supervise and manage, and much too varied in scope as to be quite difficult to coordinate.  One cannot be a grains expert and a fisheries expert  at the  same time.  Not even both a poultry and hog specialist.  There is merit in the long-advocated proposal (by former DTI secretary, former congressman and former governor Luis Villafuerte of Camarines Sur) to divide the DA into one concerned with land-based concerns and one for marine and aquatic resources.

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But then again, one need only to  be a good manager, able to harness diverse talents  and motivate them to achieve.  Good governance is not always about specialization rather  than administrative skills and right directions.

Willy comes to a highly problematic department which is being blamed by most everyone for sluggish performance, the effects of which on the macro-economy for the last few years has been depressing.  Not only that, he comes to an agency whose experienced and  well-trained middle management have been afflicted with low morale.

Some of them retired facing several graft cases lodged in the Sandiganbayan simply because they followed orders from previous top management, their meager pensions eaten up by heavy costs of litigation.  Many still in the service are thus petrified into inaction, incapable of decisive action in a department where immediate solutions  are needed to stave food crisis, and projects need to be implemented within the budget cycle because food is an every day matter and farmers live on hand-to-mouth.

Willy, though, comes with far better credentials than any of his predecessors in the last decade and a half, a real agriculturist with both domestic and international experience.  He was appointed by President Estrada in 1998 as acting secretary, a stand-in for Erap’s vice presidential candidate Ed Angara who wanted to head the department, having chaired the agriculture committee in the Senate before.  And in a year at the helm, Willy managed to grow agriculture by 6 percent, a record in the history of the department.

Thus is William Dar welcomed into a department in crisis.

But the challenges that face him and his department are also quite daunting: the first years of the implementation of the Rice Tariffication Law which removed quantitative restrictions on the importation of the country’s staple food and its effects on the incomes and livelihood of some 3 million palay farmers; the continuing high prices of fish, vegetables, pork and poultry, and not only because of seasonal or cyclical reasons but due to continued neglect  and wrong implementation of right policies or no policies whatsoever. And there is climate change which affects the resources upon which food is produced.  So many, many more, which we are certain Secretary Dar knows all too well even before he accepted the position.

With the help of the economic managers, particularly Secretary Sonny Dominguez who recommended him to the President, he should be allowed to replace some of the clear misfits who have never bothered to improve their learning abilities on the job.  He should now be part of the economic team because agriculture is an integral part of the macro-economy, and affects the lives of everyone, whether farmer or consumer.

There are a hundred and one details that the new agriculture secretary will have to manage properly, and he needs competent and well-intentioned people to assist him to overturn many years of lethargy.

We wish him the best.

* * *

To show how ingenious a mix of Filipino and Taiwanese blood can be, let me cite here a Chinese Filipino, Tsai Sheng-lun, who was able to turn the non-recyclable plastic layer of paper cups and boxes into floor tiles.

To be able to withstand moisture seepage, paper cups and boxes, especially those used for food products are coated with a thin layer of plastic. These have to be  peeled off before recycling by machines because these are non-recyclable.

Working as a volunteer of Tzu  Chi Foundation, and leaving  a high-paying job as an architect to devote himself to the humanitarian endeavors of the foundation under the leadership of Master Cheng Yen, Tsai invested effort to make the most use of waste plastic.  

After two years of research and continuous experimentation, he was able to convert the plastic waste into floor tiles which can be joined seamlessly and can withstand weights of up to 40 tons.  The innovation can also make use of candy plastic wraps and other plastic wastes, advancing the cause of environmental protection.

There are no limits to what the human mind can invent.  Put to good use for the benefit of humankind, the world will be a better place to inhabit as God’s creatures.

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