In the Philippines, forty percent of the labor force is employed in agriculture. Yet, food insecurity continues to haunt the land, and the farmers who produce food are not only among the country’s poorest, they are also its mostly-invisible citizens. With the tools of science and a great reserve of social empathy, one remarkable individual has devoted his life to addressing these problems.
The roots of his devotion run deep. ROMULO DAVIDE was born in the mountain barrio of Colawin in Argao, Cebu province, to school teachers who raised him and his six siblings in the values of hard work, education, and community service. DAVIDE has practiced these values all his life: doing farm work as a child, working as a student laborer to help pay his way through college, scrimping to pursue his dream of getting the highest education. Growing up in a poor farming village, in a province where the common lament was that little could be harvested from small, over-cultivated, soil-exhausted farms, he drew inspiration from what his father often said, “There are no barren soils, only barren minds.” It was thus that he decided to be an agricultural scientist.
Today, with a doctorate and advanced training in the United States and Ireland, he is one of the country’s top scientists, hailed as the “Father of Plant Nematology” for his many years of teaching and groundbreaking research on nematode pests that infest, debilitate, and destroy agricultural crops. His discovery of nematode-trapping fungi (P. lilacinus and P. oxalicum) led to the development of BIOCON, the first Philippine biological control product that can be used against nematode pests attacking vegetables, banana, potato, citrus, pineapple, rice, and other crops, thus making available a practical substitute for highly toxic and expensive chemical nematicides. Without thought of personal gain, he has seen one of his discoveries commercially marketed to fight banana nematode infestation in the Philippines, Latin America, and other parts of the world.
But DAVIDE is more than just a groundbreaking laboratory scientist. Throughout his career, he has immersed himself in field extension work, as director of the National Crop Protection Center (1989-92) and in numerous extension programs of the University of the Philippines-Los Baños College of Agriculture.
In 1994, named “Outstanding Agricultural Scientist” by the Department of Agriculture, he used his award money to launch in Colawin the “Corn-based Farmer-Scientists Training Program” (FSTP). An innovative and multi-faceted program, FSTP aimed, through actual field experience and interaction with experts, to turn farmers into “farmer-scientists” who would be able to do experiments, discover effective techniques, manage the market, and increase production. Starting with seventy-four farmers in Colawin, and enlisting the support of government and academe, FSTP expanded to cover thirty-five Cebu towns and six other provinces by 2007. It proved its success when farmers were able to increase corn yields six to twelve times over, and adopted intercropping systems and animal production technologies that further increased their incomes. Recognizing this success, the national government adopted the FSTP in 2008 for countrywide implementation, with the Department of Agriculture and UP Los Baños as lead implementors and DAVIDE as program leader. Today, FSTP is being implemented in twenty provinces across the country.
Clear-minded about his goals, DAVIDE has all these years refused to be discouraged by erratic funding, bureaucratic inertia, or political interference, saying that one must learn “to walk straight even on a crooked path.” At seventy-eight, he continues to be driven by the dream that, indeed, the land can be made fertile if minds are challenged to become fertile as well.
In electing ROMULO DAVIDE to receive the 2012 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his steadfast passion in placing the power and discipline of science in the hands of Filipino farmers, who have consequently multiplied their yields, created productive farming communities, and rediscovered the dignity of their labor.
