Department of Agriculture (DA) Acting Secretary William Dollente Dar shares his vision and directions to attain growth and development in the Philippine Agriculture as he met with DA key officials at the Bureau of Soils and Water Management Convention Hall on August 6, 2019.

“Productivity is primary, but it has to be beyond productivity,” Dar stressed.

He added that the Department must work in partnership with the private sector to reach a respectable level of growth and development by transforming a commodity into an industry.

Dar, who served as DA Secretary from July 1998 to May 1999 under the the Estrada administration, has held various positions focusing on agricultural research. He was the Director-General of the India-based International Center for Research in the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) from 1999 to 2014; designated director of the Philippine Council for Agricultural Research and Rural Development (PCCARRD) in 1994, and the first director of the DA-Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) in 1988. (Ela Arciaga/DA-AFID)