There’s still hope in agriculture

A few weeks ago, the new Dean of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University, Dipak Jain, visited the local alumni association. Being an alumnus of Kellogg, I had the opportunity to listen to a very interesting talk by the first Asian Dean of one of the very top MBA schools in the world. Also in attendance were graduates from the 1950s to the present.

Kellogg is globally known for its excellence in Marketing (arguably the best Marketing program in the world). So it was not surprising that Dean Jain focused part of his presentation on how he intends to enhance Kellogg’s global brand image. The Kellogg brand today is probably better known for the corn flakes and cereal products and not the business school, but maybe in a few years’ time, this situation will be reversed. Dean Jain also intends to help market and enhance the overall image of Northwestern University itself. Today, some people (like one of my brothers) only know that Northwestern is where top tennis player Todd Martin graduated from, or where supermodel Cindy Crawford attended her freshman year. I am sure all that will change sooner or later.

Getting back to Dean Jain’s speech, he also took us through an interesting story about his path from a simple mathematician educated in Indian schools to the top academic office at Kellogg. It was quite inspiring. What was even more interesting is that our Dean, who is very happily married, had a "fixed or arranged marriage" (i.e., his father picked his bride). And he married only after he was already a professor at Kellogg. It was quite refreshing indeed to see that he has kept some of his cultural heritage and values even as he operates in one of the most visible academic positions in the West. I wish I could say the same for some of us (myself included...sometimes) who would rather downplay our Filipino roots and background rather than be more proud of it. Ahhh, that dreaded colonial mentality of ours; will it be with us the rest of our lives?

What struck me most about our Dean’s speech was his "first impression" on where the Philippines ought to be focusing its competitive energies in order to generate a more optimal "return" for its people (i.e., I mean a better life for the general population). Before I get to this first impression of his, let me just state that this was Dean Jain’s first trip to the country, and he only stayed a few days. Let me also state that one of the hallmarks of sound Marketing strategy (besides knowing what your customer wants) is knowing what you’re good at doing, as this then critically forms your competitive advantage in moving forward.

With a number of fairly prominent and upcoming IT specialists in attendance during our meeting, and with our Dean being Indian, I thought he was going to hone in on the Information Technology angle – i.e., that the Filipino has an excellent opportunity to replicate the Indian miracle in executing global IT outsourcing and development, given our huge pool of very trainable and educated labor force, our penchant for American-styled English, our appreciation for Western customs, etc.

But to my surprise, he did not tackle this. Instead, what he focused on was agriculture and, in particular, biotechnology which supports cutting-edge agricultural techniques and practices that make us more productive and effective in this area. Given our significant natural resources (still) and the fact that, whether we like it or not, we are an agricultural society still (so what’s wrong with that anyway?), these seem to be obvious competitive weapons that our country should be investing in, driving forward and sustainably enhancing, instead of downplaying or feeling ashamed about.

True, there was all that talk that agricultural-based societies are essentially backward, as the modern world really means factories and industrialization. Well, we’ve already tried that route and have swallowed the bitter pill of failure in this arena. But what’s so wrong about being good at agriculture and its related industry sectors? When I was a very young boy, my Dad took us to U.P. Los Baños and the Rice Institute. People there proudly told us that farmers and scientists from around the region came to our Rice Institute to learn the latest techniques, etc. Of course, we all know the rest of the story – countries like Thailand and Malaysia have literally picked our local brains, gone back home, and not just executed better than us but actually discovered even better ways to grow rice (sure sounds like the Japanese model to me).

I don’t think the Dean’s message means we should not put energies as well into IT or other market arenas. We do have a potentially sizeable opportunity here too (but let’s forget about overtaking India; it ain’t going to happen). But my key takeaway point from all this is that all is not lost for our agricultural sector. In fact, the pareto here is that we’re still going to get 80 percent of overall benefit for our population by focusing on agriculture. And in particular, we still have an opportunity to be one of the global best here, to be cutting-edge and be a leader in agriculture-based biotechnology. This would be very profitable for our country, because everyone in this world needs to eat everyday of their lives. But we need to think outside the box of our traditional paradigms. For example, instead of feeling sorry for all our coconut farmers, we ought to be thinking about ways to enhance this sector. I personally don’t believe for one minute (at least, not yet anyway) that our coconut industry is a sunset sector. As I paraphrase what Ramon Ang, Vice Chairman of dominant San Miguel Corporation, said in a recent informal meeting of business leaders, we’ve got to focus more on value-added products and services, not just on producing the darn commodity (in this case, the coconut). But it takes strong focus to do this. If we try to do too many things yet again, we’ll never get anything done right.