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had a project funded by the Ford Foundation, the ‘Highland Rural Development Project,’ promoting participatory
R&D and harnessing modern as well as traditional technologies to increase productivity in highland soils. MSAC,
PCARRD, BSU, Ford Foundation must have sensed that they were dealing with someone with extraordinary mind,
manner, method.
Then another paradigm shift. From being VP for R&D Support Services at BSU, we next find him in 1986 as a
member of the Board of Directors of the Federation of Crop Science Societies of the Philippines (FCSSP). In
1987, he became the founding Director of the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR), a new agency of the
Department of Agriculture (DA). Under him, BAR set out to rationalize agriculture-related R&D as well as the
resources in support of programs and projects all over the country. He stayed there for 7 years, up to 1994,
effectively directing the flow of the science of agriculture as input and output, soon making BAR a credible,
respected government agency.
And yet another paradigm shift. From managing R&D
for agriculture, he went on to managing R&D in other
fields, becoming Executive Director of the Philippine
Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources
Research and Development (PCARRD) in 1994. Here, he
was also Godfather to one brainchild after another:
Magsasakang Siyentista or Farmer-Scientist Program
(FSP); the Farmers’ Information & Technology Services
(FITS) arm of PCARRD, with FITS strategically located in
the regions. The FSP treated farmers as co-developers
of technology; the FITS was the disseminator of
technology, both software and hardware. He was head
of PCARRD up to 1998.
And another shift. After PCARRD, he rose again and
became Secretary of the Department of Agriculture
in 1998. He was the first and is still the only UP Los
Baños graduate to head that office, staying up to 1999.
Those were troubled times for Philippine agriculture, the country being visited by the El Niño phenomenon in
1997-1998, with 90% of the archipelago receiving 50% less rainfall than usual (interrogate.info). When Mother
Nature acts, man can only react.
Within 1999, he became Presidential Adviser on Food Security and Rural Development, as well as Chairman-
Coordinator of the National Agricultural and Fishery Council (NAFC) and Executive Director of NAFC, Office of the
President. He was now in a position to influence the highest executive of the land in matters of agriculture. The
Instructor in a small college in rural Benguet was now the Food Security Adviser to the President. He had a Room
with a View at the Top on Philippine agriculture and what ails it and what can make it well again.
Being A Different Kind Of CV