William Dar’s Legacy Of Thinking Blanked By Failure Of Extension In PH Agriculture! Outstanding Example: UP Los Baños Greets Everyone At The Campus Gate With 2 Giant Digital Screens, But Never For Upgrading Agriculture!

Thursday, 30 June 2022 is the last day of William Dar as PH Secretary of Agriculture – I, UP Los Baños alumnus, am unhappy to see him go. I blame the Extension People, mostly in the state universities & colleges (SUCs), led by UPLB, whose social media efforts are aimed mostly at campus visitors & passersby – the SUCs failed to appreciate and afterwards deliver the power of Mr Dar’s unprecedented & unparalleled legacy: “The New Thinking For Agriculture” (TNT for A). The SUCs misinterpreted that dynamite power!

(top photo, cropped, taken by me 08 Sept 2018)

“I have seen the future. It’s in my browser,” says Ben Watts of Challenge Advisory (13 Sept 2018); I say, to help people nowadays, you use social media, with which people can view and learn via cellphones only. My alma mater failing in social media in the last 20 years, I am notproud of UP Los Baños!
(“Media” image from Challenge Advisory, challenge.org)

The so-called “Science Community of Los Baños” comprising of Asean Centre for Biodiversity, PCAARRD, PhilRice Los Baños, IRRI, Searca and UPLB – what knowledge works for agriculture did they do in the 2+ years that Mr Dar was Secretary of Agriculture? Nothing much for PH Agriculture that I, an inveterate web browser (human) know of. If the leader fails, the followers follow!

I have been paying attention to media releases, and I have yet to encounter any item saying UPLB has any semblance of a digital library for beginning & experienced farmers who want to proceed more intelligently with available science for growing crops or raising livestock. Earlier, I had written about this (01 June 2022, “My Proposal: Unlimited-Usable Popular-Language Bank For Advancing Agriculture (UPLB for A2) – What You See Right Now Should Be A Portent Of Things To Come!” Towards A New Eden, towardsaneweden.blogspot.com).

(I have already blamed the aggie journalists – see my essay 29 June 2022, “Journalists, Wake Up…” Towards A New Eden, towardsaneweden.blogspot.com.)

That Knowledge Bank “UPLB for A2” I suggested (above) has gone unnoticed by any UPLB campus people in the whole of this month, June, That tells me UPLB minds travel the information superhighway called the “Internet” for their unlimited personal & educational interests but limited farmer interests, not to further their knowledge in science – or that of people in agriculture that the University can and should help.

The bottom image is an accidental collage of my photographs in my Windows 10 Lenovo Flex2laptop, with the time and date 13:43 Friday, 04 May (2018): Mr Dar is on top, smiling radiantly. He has said separately on Facebook, about BBM as interim Secretary of Agriculture: “I am one of the happiest Filipinos” (June 27); “Agri will now be prioritized” (28 June).

Great! With PH President BBM on top of it, he himself will be seeing what BASF has been telling all the world: “Farming is the biggest job on earth”!@517

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