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Does Agriculture belong in a Democracy? Of course! Democracy is ecstasy, but you can't eat ecstasy.  Retiring William Dar is going out as Director General of ICRISAT based in India 4 days from now; New Year's Day is almost here; actually, he is not retiring, as he's coming in as President of the Inanglupa Movement based in the Philippines full-time. "The best is yet to be!" I always sign copies of my books – 7 so far published by ICRISAT (#8 in press) – that I give away with these words: "The best is yet to come!" It is both an exhortation (to hope for the best of the best in the receiver's life) and an exultation (and a hope for the best of the best yet from the giver). Here is where it's coming from, a variation of Robert Browning's  Rabbi Ben Ezra  that I memorized in high school yet: Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, For which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I

Democracy. You can touch it and yet it's not real. It's real and yet you don't understand it. You understand it and yet you know it's not complete. What is it, really? "Democracy must in essence mean the art and science of mobilizing the entire physical, economic and spiritual resources of all the various sections of the people in the service of the common good of all" - Mahatma Gandhi ( mkgandhi.org ). "There is one quality, perhaps above all others, which is essential if a state is to be democratic and that is accountability" – Anonymous ( bullen.demon.co.uk ). "Majority rule is the heart and soul of democracy" – Yan Ming ( chinadaily.com.cn ). "Nonviolence is the Essence of Democracy" – Stephanie N Van Hook ( mettacenter.org ). "The essence of democracy involves a completeness of morals and intelligence, standing by and looking forward to the benefits of the public, not resorting to violence and ensuring that the people ar

MANILA: On February 2013, Senior Writer of WIRED Magazine Steven Levy & others dared readers to "think big" (on pages 65-75) with 7 radical ideas, with this tagline on the cover: "One massive idea can change the world. Here are 7" – and these are:  (1) Make airplanes rechargeable. (2) Fuel the planet with micromachines. (3) Spray WiFi hot spots on everything. (4) Turn deserts into power plants. (5) Put digital displays in your eyes. (6) Declare war on incoming asteroids. (7) Build skycrapers out of diamonds. Great! But none is radical enough, and even all of them combined is limited in the size of the target. They are all private business-oriented, and not a single great idea declares war on poverty, and that is where the world's single greatest challenge lies. 500 million farm families times 4 in a household equals 2 billion lives, the world's single greatest number. But who gives a damn about any farm family? If the world's newspapers are to be bel

MANILA: ICRISAT is in business, in case you didn't know – for the farmers. The statement says it all: "ICRISAT creates business opportunities for farmer producer organizations" (ICRISAT Happenings 1647, 31 October 2014,  icrisat.org ): Farmer producer organizations (FPOs) from six states of India are benefiting from the agribusiness facilitation of ICRISAT that will enable them to operate as businesses and make their farm operations sustainable and profitable. I'm a very wide reader, but I never heard (or noticed) of "farmer producer organizations" until now. At any rate, ICRISAT, through its Agri-Business Incubation (ABI) unit, believed they were important enough to organize a 1-day summit for them, 27 October 2014, so I googled and found that, for instance, notably, 2014 has been declared by India's Department of Agriculture & Cooperation as "Year of Farmer Producer Organizations." So, the FPOs  are nationally important  to India. As an e

MANILA: It seemed strange that Director General William Dar of ICRISAT was asked to address on 26 October 2014 a convocation of the 2014 graduating class of the Synergy School of Business (SSB) at Hyderabad in India. ICRISAT's mandate is research in agriculture, specifically in the growing of 5 crops for the drylands of Africa and Asia: chickpea, peanut, pearl millet, pigeon pea, and sorghum. Actually, ICRISAT is also into business partnerships, having the Agri-Business Incubation (ABI) set up at its campus in Patancheru, Telangana, India. In fact, ICRISAT's ABI won the prestigious Asian Association of Business Incubation (AABI) Award in 2008. In January 2014, ICRISAT held a 1-day Agribusiness Fair at its headquarters and was attended by more than 300 agribusiness innovators and entrepreneurs (ANS, 17 January 2014,  icrisat.org ). On that occasion, Dar said: ICRISAT nurtures a research for development paradigm, now guided by a strategic framework called Inclusive Market-Oriente

MANILA: ICRISAT tweets: "How can sustainable intensification make farming climate-smart?" on 17 October 2014 at 1:53 AM. Early bird. Will this early bird get the worm? The worm is  sustainable intensification of agriculture,  Sinag, my acronym. It just happens that the word formed is Filipino. In Tagalog,  sinag  means  halo around the heads of images of saints, lamp, moon, ray of light from sun, stars;  it also means  glimmer  ( tagalogtranslate.com ). It signifies knowledge or wisdom. In Ilocano,  sinag  is a prefix that indicates how many strands are twisted together to make a rope; thus,  sinagdudua  means  made of 2 strands  (Carl R Galvez Rubino,  books.google.co.in ). It signifies strength. Very useful metaphors, as we shall see later, after we get to know what sustainable intensification of agriculture actually is. Has ICRISAT gotten Sinag right? If it hasn't, it is a sin against agriculture! So what do we know about the subject? In their paper published in 1999,

MANILA: On Monday, 15 September 2014, ICRISAT Director General William Dar was informed by the Indian National Organizing Committee of the Agriculture Leadership Awards that on Saturday, 27 September 2014, he will be conferred the  Lifetime Achievement Award  in an apt ceremony at the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi in India. The letter was signed by MJ Khan, President of the  Agriculture Today  Group, the sponsor of the Awards that this year include these categories: Policy, Research, Extension, Farming, Industry, Environment, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, CSR, Development, Lifetime Achievement, and State Leadership. It is high honor. The magazine  Agriculture Today  is the leading exponent of agricultural progress in the huge, progressive country called India, where ICRISAT is based.  If your base country loves you, you must be good. Khan said in the letter, "Agriculture Leadership Awards were started in 2008 to recognize the leadership roles played by individuals and insti