Scientist with a human face. William Dar earns Lifetime Achievement Award 2014

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 institutions, (that) which are positively impacting the lives of farmers and rural masses."

Khan told Dar in the letter that the Lifetime Achievement Award is to be conferred "for your pioneering work (spanning) over four decades towards empowering farm and farmers through agriculture research, extension, technology development, partnerships and international cooperation, which have positively impacted the lives of a large number of farmers in India and around the world."

Note that the Lifetime Achievement Award is for the awardee's innovative and enabling work in 5 zones: research, extension, technology development, partnership and international cooperation that have positively influenced the lives of dryland farmers in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia.

Counting from 2014, "over four decades" includes the beginning of William Dollente Dar's career in his native Philippines as a college graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Education from the Mountain State Agricultural College (MSAC, now the Benguet State University), being first employed as a Farm Management Technician (FMT) for the Bureau of Agricultural Extension (now Agricultural Training Institute) of the Department of Agriculture, assigned in Benguet Province, in 1973, FMT being the entry point for fresh aggie graduates in the Philippines. But teaching was in his blood, so he moved on to the Baguio City High School (BCHS) and taught there up to 1975. From the BCHS, in the same year, he returned to MSAC to teach college students, starting as Instructor 1, rising to Professor 3 within 6 years, in 1981.

After that, his workspace shifted from the classroom to the office to the field. In 1982, he became Planning Development Officer, in 1983 Special Assistant to the President for Research, Planning and Development, in 1986 Professor IV, and in 1987 Vice President for R&D Support Services of MSAC. In 12 years, he was already in management. At the same time, he was Research Coordinator of the Highland Agriculture and Resources Research and Development Consortium of the Philippine Council for Agriculture and Resources Research and Development from 1979 to 1987. This agriculture graduate is gravitating towards management; it must be destiny.

It is important to note here that in agriculture, if you are a teacher, you lead young minds in learning science. If you are a manager, you lead the scientists to learn with the peasants science for the poor. If you want to be a good leader, you must be a good teacher.

William Dar has some good professional background in theoretical science. He has a Master of Science in Agronomy from the BSU (1976), and a Doctor of Philosophy in Horticulture from the premier university in that field, the University of the Philippines Los Baños (1980). If you study at UP Los Baños, you eat science for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I know, I'm an alumnus.

He has much experience in managing applied science. From Research Coordinator of the Highland Consortium starting 1979, again, he moved up the ladder of management when in 1987, he became the founding Director of the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR), an agency under the Department of Agriculture (DA). His job was to rationalize R&D directly related to agriculture under the jurisdiction of the DA. He had his hands full, there being at that time the 15-year old Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry & Resources Research and Development (PCARRD). Under his leadership, the BAR became a respectable government agency. He stayed there up to 1994. He learned to manage conflict and convergence.

A good leader grows and goes up. From the BAR, in 1994 William Dar became the Executive Director of PCARRD itself. From a narrow focus on agricultural research, he had to graduate to a broad outlook on agriculture along with forestry and natural resources of the whole Philippines.

At PCARRD, he introduced the program Magsasakang Siyentista, Farmer Scientist, the idea being that the peasant is a partner in the discovery of new or improved technology. In other words, the target user was now a collaborator in the development of that particular technology, to make sure that it fits his requirements and circumstances. I'm a graduate of Ag Ed myself and a writer; I have been in and out of the University of the Philippines Los Baños and so I know that the farmer-as-scientist idea was new. William Dar was empowering the poor Filipino farmer.

He is pro-poor, I mean, he wants the poor to rise from their poverty and stay up there. He has known poverty. The parents of William Dar were poor farmers and could not afford to send him to college – his uncle did.

After PCARRD, he rose higher in rank and became the Secretary of Agriculture in 1998, and had the distinction of being the first UP Los Baños graduate to head the Department of Agriculture, staying up to 1999. In the same year, he became Presidential Adviser on Food Security and Rural Development, as well as Chair of the National Agricultural & Fishery Council. And when he made the leap from Presidential Adviser of his country to head of an international agriculture research center, the soft-spoken giant was ready.

I suspect that his dream of "empowerment of poor farmers" slowly transformed itself into the international and more friendly "science with a human face" much later when William Dar became the Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in January 2000. As Director General of ICRISAT, he met the biggest challenge of his life, and it was not just that ICRISAT had hundreds of staff and that it was based in India, which was some 3,000 miles away from home in the Philippines, and ICRISAT had country offices in Africa. The triple headaches were that funds, morale and achievements were down, not necessarily in that order. Disarray had been winning over design. ICRISAT was saying goodbye to itself.

To inspire the ICRISAT staff, William Dar came up with the concept that they were all members of "Team ICRISAT," and he was merely the Team Captain. They were in all of these things together; the ideal was all for one, one for all, borrowing from Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers. For the poor farmers of the drylands of Africa and Asia, he advocated a "Grey to Green Revolution," referring to turning the infertile soils into fertile sites, reminding them also of the old Green Revolution. He also came up with "Science with a human face." Over the years, all those themes helped transform ICRISAT from an institutional loser to an institutional winner to institutional champion among the 15 international research centers under the CGIAR. In his heart, human face must have meant a poor farmer. "Science with a human face" means science with sympathy for the people, but especially the poor, because their poverty makes them all-too-human.

ICRISAT, inspired by William Dar, has been very innovative and boldly pioneering, such as in genome sequencing of pigeon pea, inventory credit, African Market Garden (thrifty drift irrigation), microdosing of fertilizers, raising a watershed where none grew before, water-saving systems even beyond its mandate crops, and inclusive market-oriented development (IMOD). Under IMOD, the market must belong to the producer. If you want to truly emancipate the poor farmers from poverty, you must IMOD your process.

In the ICRISAT mantra "Science with a human face," I see double and subtle. One, the scientist must serve the people, the peasants. Two, with science, the peasants must serve themselves because the scientists cannot do everything for them: Science is a tool for empowerment; the farmers must use science to empower themselves.

All in all, William Dar deserves much any Lifetime Achievement Award from any group from any country in Africa or Asia; His achievement is not self-serving but public service, science serving with a human face.

A Lifetime Achievement Award is really a reward for consistent unselfish leadership that spans many areas and years. For William Dar, it is a leadership that empowers farmers, scientists, extensionists, technology developers, and partners in system innovation, ultimately to emancipate the poor farm families from poverty.

He is retiring New Year's Eve after 15 years of headship of ICRISAT. I believe William Dar's lifetime achievements from the Philippines to the world can be summarized beautifully in only 5 of his own words:

Science with a human face.

Image above borrowed from wn.com