President Duterte chooses Dr. William Dar as new agriculture secretary

Dr. William Dar, former Director General of ICRISAT or the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, was named as the new Department of Agriculture Secretary by President Rodrigo Duterte. (Eagle News Service/Photo grabbed from ASEAN in Focus program of Eagle Broadcasting Corporation)

 

(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte has chosen his next Agriculture Secretary in the person of Dr. William Dar, a noted international agriculturist and a former secretary himself of the Department of Agriculture.

Dar holds the distinction of being the first Filipino and Asian to be the Director General of International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

He served as ICRISAT director general for 15 years, having been selected for the post in 1999 and serving the top international post from 2000 to 2014.

Dar will replace former Agriculture Secretary Manny Pinol who will be assigned as head of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA).

The ICRISAT itself has honored Dr. Dar’s “15 years of service and vision of inclusive market oriented development to serve smallholder farmers in semi-arid tropics” by naming a building in his name. The ICRISAT-Agriculture Innovation Platform (AIP) building was named as the ‘William D Dar Agribusiness Centre’.

ICRISAT is an international organization which conducts agricultural research for rural development, headquartered in Patancheru (Hyderabad, Telangana, India) with several regional centers (Bamako (Mali), Nairobi (Kenya)) and research stations (Niamey (Niger), Kano (Nigeria), Lilongwe (Malawi), Addis Ababa(Ethiopia), Bulawayo (Zimbabwe)). It was founded in 1972 by a consortium of organizations convened by the Ford and the Rockefeller foundations. Its charter was signed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the UN Development Program.

Dr. Dar was also Chair of the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) from 2007 to 2009.

He serves as a Member of Governing Board at The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics. Dr. Dar has also been a Member of the UN Millennium Task Force on Hunger. Prior to joining ICRISAT, he served as Presidential Adviser for Rural Development, and Secretary of Agriculture in the Philippines, the first ever alumnus of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) to become one.

Before this, he served as Executive Director of the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), Director of the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) of the Philippine Department of Agriculture (DA) and Vice President for R&D and Professor of Benguet State University (BSU).

Currently, he is the President of InangLupa Movement that actively pursues urgent, collective, and cohesive action towards poverty alleviation, food and nutrition security, and economic prosperity through a New Philippine Agriculture by 2020. In addition, he is also the Strategic Adviser for Global Expansion of Prasad Seeds.