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Preface
T
eam ICRISAT is publishing this book the better to share these informative and innovative essays with readers
outside of the World Wide Web. The Web, more popularly called the Internet, altogether makes up an entirely
different collection of readers. Even to those who have read these unique essays online in the many diverse
websites where they are published, but especially the American Chronicle (http://americanchronicle.com/), the articles
will reveal something new on the second reading, another something new on the third, and still another something
new on the fourth reading. All written in the first person with the aim of engaging the reader in a one-on-one, we
like to think they can be aptly described in one sentence: Science writing with a human face.
This collection of essays is by Frank A Hilario, a Filipino writer and editor known for his high standards, varied
experience in information and communication as well as a wide interest in subject matter from Africa to Shakespeare,
from Abaca to Zen Buddhism, any of which animates and expands the view in each article written, so that even an
old topic always becomes interesting and turns out to be something new the way he tells it. Most of the essays are
1,000 words plus; several are twice as long. None of them is boring.
The author is a graduate of the University of the Philippines Los Baños; his degree is BS Agriculture with major in
Ag Education; his first love, he says, is writing, beginning when he was in high school. The reader can glean more
of the author in reading the essays where he reveals his original thoughts and more and more of himself.
Certainly, each of the essays, original and interesting as they are, sometimes even intriguing, leads to a telling of
a singular story on or about Team ICRISAT on one hand, and the Team Captain on the other – as well as partner
institutions around the world. Team symbolizes partnership in the first place, characterized by active and interactive
initiatives that are designed to carry forward ICRISAT’s mantra, which is Science with a human face, in pursuit
of the Grey to Green Revolution.
Several of these essays focus on or make special mention of sweet sorghum as the ‘sweet crop’ for problem soils:
waterlogged, rainfed, drought-stricken, infertile soils where irrigation is an expensive proposition. The author’s
firm belief in ICRISAT as a whole, and the passion of the writer’s advocacy of what Team ICRISAT is or has been
doing is evident in each essay.
It is amazing how within each of his stories, he leads us to appreciate the relationship between matters that we do
not usually associate with each other, or would label as bizarre a relationship that is only pointed out but not
explained. For instance, he has been able to associate Al Gore’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize with sweet
sorghum, and the color yellow, again, with sweet sorghum. It might be said that his belief in this crop as appropriate
for the poor is as firm as ours.
It is equally astonishing how he ‘translates’ technical language into popular language in such a way that both the
layman and the technical man want to read him intently. For there is always some history and some drama to the
stories, for stories they are, not simply reportage. The essays provide a respite from the usual journalistic reportage
characterized by predictable titles, beginnings, middles, and endings.
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