Inanglupa, Motherland. Pinoy agriculture can be better faster – William Dar
Posted 19th May 2014 by Frank A Hilario
MANILA: "I was poor when I was growing up," he says. He is William Dar, Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a farmer's son (wearing white, left). He has just launched a social movement called Inanglupa(Motherland).
"I know how people toil and sweat and yet remain hungry. That's why mine is a life-long commitment to serving the poor, smallholder farmers of the world." So, in preparation for his retirement on 31 December 2014, after 15 years of being head of ICRISAT, which is based in India, he launched Inanglupa late in December 2013 when media people, development specialists, government technocrats and farmer leaders from the Philippines visited ICRISAT in India. After which he is coming back to his country, but he is not going to retire from his work for the poor farmers.
I am a farmer's son myself, and I know how people toil and sweat and yet remain poor. I got my own commitment to serving the poor from the inspiration of William Dar, whom I came to know personally in early 2007. Intuiting from ICRISAT & Partners' strategy called Inclusive Market-Oriented Development, or IMOD, I have in my mind how the cooperatives can be easily redesigned to serve the poor farmers of the world. That's why mine is now a life-long commitment to serving what I call the Super Coops (for more details, see my "My mistake, Cynthia Villar's mistake? The Inclusive Lesson from ICRISAT," 31 October 2013,blogspot.com).
At 61 (10 April 2014), due to retire end of this year as the leader of ICRISAT, through Inanglupa, William Dar has reinvented himself as the advocate for a new Philippine agriculture; I don't need to reinvent myself – I will simply volunteer for Inanglupa. In the meantime, Inanglupa is advising the Philippine government to execute the following 3 massive steps, which I give here in the order of priority that he sees, which is a revision of what Alladin S Diega has reported (12 April 2014, businessmirror.com):
Priority 1. Undertake soil mapping.
While the government is now into soil accounting, William Dar says, this must be done in a wider scale and a quicker manner. This is a lesson from the ICRISAT-India massively successful project called Bhoochetana (soil rejuvenation) that I first wrote about 2 years ago ("The Bhoochetana Revolution. Political will applied with science," 05 July 2012,iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com): You cannot revive intelligently a soil that you don't know anything about. This is especially important in areas that have been farmed intensively for years and years, resulting in either lack of nutrients or too much of them because of over-fertilization, you don't know. Same in India, same in the Philippines.
Priority 2. Encourage more planting of hybrid crops.
With the seeds' hybrid vigor and your farmer care, you get healthy crops and, therefore, healthy harvests. As a consultant of the Department of Agrarian Reform meeting and training farmers in many towns in Pangasinan and La Union, I myself know that very few farmers are planting hybrid rice, so they're missing on higher yields, as much as 50% higher than what farmers are getting from their farmer-selected seeds. PhilRice scientist Evelyn B Gergon says the use of hybrid rice in the country is "no more than 10%" (Diega as cited). On the surface, the major reason is that hybrid seeds are more expensive than farmer seeds. Digging deeper, I know that our farmers are not business-minded; this is proven by the fact that they don't even know the cost of their production per unit! In one of our consultancy visits for a market-oriented training project with the Department of Agrarian Reform, a woman farmer in La Union said, rhetorically, "Apay ngay nga bayadak ti bagbagik?!" (Why do I have to pay myself?!)
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. It's not only rice. "More than rice," William Dar says, "we should recognize that particular areas in the country have soil characteristics that are better for other crops." Like corn, peanut, bitter gourd, sugarcane, sweet sorghum, chickpea, or tomato. But if the farmer insists on monoculture, he says, since his soil has been characterized, he can easily be told to support his favorite crop with the right type and amount of fertilizer(s).
Priority 3. Sustain capacity building of farmers and other stakeholders.
For one, the farmers must be trained to become informal rice seed growers, which will improve the seed supply of the country. Based on our own visits to agrarian reform farmers in Pangasinan and La Union, we know that the supply of good seeds is small. We also heard the bad news that when the price of palay was high, 20+ pesos per kilo, some seed producers sold their harvests to the highest bidders without going through much trouble, denying farmers their regular supply of high-quality seeds. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? Some farmers need more education than they can afford.
“Not only the farmers," Dar says, "but even companies engaged in agribusiness and the financial institutions should be educated to the needs of the farmers and the types of crops most suitable in a given area or soil type.” The poor farmers must be good for credit because they are not good for cash.
Specifically with the movement, Dar sees Inanglupa complementing the efforts of the Department of Agriculture, Department of Environment & Natural Resources, and Department of Science & Technology – and local government units, the private sector, academe, and farmers' groups (ANN, 15 April 2014, philstar.com). That signifies that the new & improved Philippine agriculture must be a partnership of public, science, private, people and farmer groups working for the attainment of common interests, which according to Dar are "food & nutrition security, economic prosperity, and environmental sustainability." There must be food on the table for everyone; there must be improved financial lives for everybody; and natural resources must be used wisely so that food and finance can come from them continuously.
The former Agriculture Secretary says Inanglupa "advocates an inclusive, science-based, climate-resilient and market-oriented Philippine agriculture" that he hopes will be attained by the year 2020, or barely 6 years from now. He is essentially referring to the strategy of ICRISAT & Partners that they call inclusive market-oriented development or IMOD.
I have been writing about IMOD in the last 4 years (see my essay, "An African Revolution. IMOD power to the women!" 22 September 2010, iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com), so I know that "inclusive" means the poor are included as actors in the common work for progress not simply as recipients of benefits that others may deem to give them; "science-based" means derived from or verified by research and not simply particular speculation or singular experience; "climate-resilient" means crops that are resistant to drought and other stresses; and "market-oriented" means the farmers as producers are entitled to the benefits of the whole value chain from production to marketing, that is, the farmers or their chosen advocates are the merchants themselves.
Earlier this month, we were consulting with farmers in La Union and they were telling us that the price of palay had gone down to 15 pesos per kilo, and I knew and told them that it was 20 pesos in Asingan, Pangasinan. Clearly, the traders are manipulating the prices to their advantage, never mind the producers.
Exactly the main point in IMOD. In his acceptance speech for the Swaminathan Award for Leadership in Agriculture for 2013, William Dar says, in explaining his diagram of IMOD (icrisat.cgiar.org):
The first element I'd like to point out in this diagram is the big bold curve leading to the right. This curve represents harnessing markets specifically to benefit the poor,carrying them from impoverished subsistence farming to prosperous market orientation. Conventional value chains don't have this focus on the poor. Without this focus, larger scale farmers and wealthy middlemen tend to capture most of the market opportunities.
So why not connect the poor farmers directly to the market so that they will capture most of the market opportunities? They will then specifically be benefited and will surely rise from poverty. If you don't connect, as usual the merchants will connect the produce to the market, and then you know the rest of the story:
The wealthier gets wealthier and the poor remains poor.
http://icrisatwatch.blogspot.com/2014/05/inanglupa-motherland-pinoy-agriculture.html
"I know how people toil and sweat and yet remain hungry. That's why mine is a life-long commitment to serving the poor, smallholder farmers of the world." So, in preparation for his retirement on 31 December 2014, after 15 years of being head of ICRISAT, which is based in India, he launched Inanglupa late in December 2013 when media people, development specialists, government technocrats and farmer leaders from the Philippines visited ICRISAT in India. After which he is coming back to his country, but he is not going to retire from his work for the poor farmers.
I am a farmer's son myself, and I know how people toil and sweat and yet remain poor. I got my own commitment to serving the poor from the inspiration of William Dar, whom I came to know personally in early 2007. Intuiting from ICRISAT & Partners' strategy called Inclusive Market-Oriented Development, or IMOD, I have in my mind how the cooperatives can be easily redesigned to serve the poor farmers of the world. That's why mine is now a life-long commitment to serving what I call the Super Coops (for more details, see my "My mistake, Cynthia Villar's mistake? The Inclusive Lesson from ICRISAT," 31 October 2013,blogspot.com).
At 61 (10 April 2014), due to retire end of this year as the leader of ICRISAT, through Inanglupa, William Dar has reinvented himself as the advocate for a new Philippine agriculture; I don't need to reinvent myself – I will simply volunteer for Inanglupa. In the meantime, Inanglupa is advising the Philippine government to execute the following 3 massive steps, which I give here in the order of priority that he sees, which is a revision of what Alladin S Diega has reported (12 April 2014, businessmirror.com):
Priority 1. Undertake soil mapping.
While the government is now into soil accounting, William Dar says, this must be done in a wider scale and a quicker manner. This is a lesson from the ICRISAT-India massively successful project called Bhoochetana (soil rejuvenation) that I first wrote about 2 years ago ("The Bhoochetana Revolution. Political will applied with science," 05 July 2012,iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com): You cannot revive intelligently a soil that you don't know anything about. This is especially important in areas that have been farmed intensively for years and years, resulting in either lack of nutrients or too much of them because of over-fertilization, you don't know. Same in India, same in the Philippines.
Priority 2. Encourage more planting of hybrid crops.
With the seeds' hybrid vigor and your farmer care, you get healthy crops and, therefore, healthy harvests. As a consultant of the Department of Agrarian Reform meeting and training farmers in many towns in Pangasinan and La Union, I myself know that very few farmers are planting hybrid rice, so they're missing on higher yields, as much as 50% higher than what farmers are getting from their farmer-selected seeds. PhilRice scientist Evelyn B Gergon says the use of hybrid rice in the country is "no more than 10%" (Diega as cited). On the surface, the major reason is that hybrid seeds are more expensive than farmer seeds. Digging deeper, I know that our farmers are not business-minded; this is proven by the fact that they don't even know the cost of their production per unit! In one of our consultancy visits for a market-oriented training project with the Department of Agrarian Reform, a woman farmer in La Union said, rhetorically, "Apay ngay nga bayadak ti bagbagik?!" (Why do I have to pay myself?!)
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. It's not only rice. "More than rice," William Dar says, "we should recognize that particular areas in the country have soil characteristics that are better for other crops." Like corn, peanut, bitter gourd, sugarcane, sweet sorghum, chickpea, or tomato. But if the farmer insists on monoculture, he says, since his soil has been characterized, he can easily be told to support his favorite crop with the right type and amount of fertilizer(s).
Priority 3. Sustain capacity building of farmers and other stakeholders.
For one, the farmers must be trained to become informal rice seed growers, which will improve the seed supply of the country. Based on our own visits to agrarian reform farmers in Pangasinan and La Union, we know that the supply of good seeds is small. We also heard the bad news that when the price of palay was high, 20+ pesos per kilo, some seed producers sold their harvests to the highest bidders without going through much trouble, denying farmers their regular supply of high-quality seeds. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? Some farmers need more education than they can afford.
“Not only the farmers," Dar says, "but even companies engaged in agribusiness and the financial institutions should be educated to the needs of the farmers and the types of crops most suitable in a given area or soil type.” The poor farmers must be good for credit because they are not good for cash.
Specifically with the movement, Dar sees Inanglupa complementing the efforts of the Department of Agriculture, Department of Environment & Natural Resources, and Department of Science & Technology – and local government units, the private sector, academe, and farmers' groups (ANN, 15 April 2014, philstar.com). That signifies that the new & improved Philippine agriculture must be a partnership of public, science, private, people and farmer groups working for the attainment of common interests, which according to Dar are "food & nutrition security, economic prosperity, and environmental sustainability." There must be food on the table for everyone; there must be improved financial lives for everybody; and natural resources must be used wisely so that food and finance can come from them continuously.
The former Agriculture Secretary says Inanglupa "advocates an inclusive, science-based, climate-resilient and market-oriented Philippine agriculture" that he hopes will be attained by the year 2020, or barely 6 years from now. He is essentially referring to the strategy of ICRISAT & Partners that they call inclusive market-oriented development or IMOD.
I have been writing about IMOD in the last 4 years (see my essay, "An African Revolution. IMOD power to the women!" 22 September 2010, iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com), so I know that "inclusive" means the poor are included as actors in the common work for progress not simply as recipients of benefits that others may deem to give them; "science-based" means derived from or verified by research and not simply particular speculation or singular experience; "climate-resilient" means crops that are resistant to drought and other stresses; and "market-oriented" means the farmers as producers are entitled to the benefits of the whole value chain from production to marketing, that is, the farmers or their chosen advocates are the merchants themselves.
Earlier this month, we were consulting with farmers in La Union and they were telling us that the price of palay had gone down to 15 pesos per kilo, and I knew and told them that it was 20 pesos in Asingan, Pangasinan. Clearly, the traders are manipulating the prices to their advantage, never mind the producers.
Exactly the main point in IMOD. In his acceptance speech for the Swaminathan Award for Leadership in Agriculture for 2013, William Dar says, in explaining his diagram of IMOD (icrisat.cgiar.org):
The first element I'd like to point out in this diagram is the big bold curve leading to the right. This curve represents harnessing markets specifically to benefit the poor,carrying them from impoverished subsistence farming to prosperous market orientation. Conventional value chains don't have this focus on the poor. Without this focus, larger scale farmers and wealthy middlemen tend to capture most of the market opportunities.
So why not connect the poor farmers directly to the market so that they will capture most of the market opportunities? They will then specifically be benefited and will surely rise from poverty. If you don't connect, as usual the merchants will connect the produce to the market, and then you know the rest of the story:
The wealthier gets wealthier and the poor remains poor.
http://icrisatwatch.blogspot.com/2014/05/inanglupa-motherland-pinoy-agriculture.html