As the newly-designated Cabinet Officer for Regional Development and Security (CORDS) for the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), Agriculture Secretary William Dollente Dar affirmed his commitment to bolster the region’s socio-economic development, anchored on sustainable, inclusive, and market-oriented agricultural programs.

“I believe we can do much more in enhancing the growth of Cordillera, and ensuring food security with prosperous farmers,” Dar said during the CORDS-Partners’ meeting, held October 31, 2019, at the Department of Agriculture (DA) CAR office, in Baguio City.

“With prosperous farming communities in the Cordillera, local chief executives can effectively address insurgency issues, attain peace and order, and reduce poverty incidence,” said Dar, who considers Cordillera as his second home, and having been declared several times as the “adopted son” of Baguio City, Municipality of La Trinidad and Province of Benguet.

“As CORDS for Cordillera, it is like a homecoming to a place where I had spent many years of my career giving me the opportunity to know and visit many parts of the region,” said the agri chief, who hails from Sta. Maria, Ilocos Sur.

He studied and worked at then Mountain State Agricultural College (MSAC) now known as Benguet State University (BSU) before he was appointed as the first director of the DA’s Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR), and thereafter as executive director of the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), and agriculture chief in 1998-1999, and now.

During the CORDS meeting, he took the opportunity to share the DA’s initiatives and plans under its Special Area for Agricultural Development (SAAD) program, which zeroes in on agriculture as the driving force for socio-economic progress in marginalized communities in CAR and other poor regions in the country. ### (Rita dela Cruz, DA-Communications Group)