Bill Gates and Irri

Manila’s political and party crowds must be sore at Bill Gates. The world’s wealthiest man ($79.2 billion in 2015, up from $76 billion last year, according to Forbes magazine) is said to have flown in on April 4, but without the hoopla usually associated with celebrities and world figures who touch down in this part of the world. Gates’ visit was devoid of any announcement or even advance word to Malacañang; he did not meet with President Aquino or other political figures, did not hobnob with the usual suspects in local high society, was not seen in the metro’s default ritzy places where the country’s elite would have typically feted him, basked in the trails of his oxygen, and claimed him as one of their own.

In fact, no photo of him in Philippine surroundings has surfaced; he is reportedly on holiday in the exclusive Amanpulo resort in Palawan with his family, and has made a side trip to the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Laguna. But the entire trip has been kept under wraps so well, and his entourage and security personnel drilled to a uniform tight-lipped silence, that all that the media could rely on to confirm the buzz about his visit are the official immigration records and the flight logs of his private plane and helicopter rides.

The reticence is understandable. All that money and the corresponding influence that goes with it make Gates a tempting target for criminal minds or syndicates preying on the wealthy and well-connected. Ensuring his safety and security is paramount, and heaven forbid that anything untoward should happen to the famous billionaire tech visionary while on Philippine soil.

On the other hand, the self-effacement also seems typical of the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, who has visibly eschewed the trappings of international celebrity to focus his attention, and the billions of dollars at his disposal, on more urgent, earthbound concerns such as trying to end hunger, disease and illiteracy in many parts of the planet. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he cofounded with his wife in 2000, has an endowment of $42.3 billion as of November 2014, and he himself has donated more than $28 billion so far to the philanthropic organization.

Gates’ visit to the Philippines, and to the Irri in particular, may be explained by the fact that his foundation is said to be the single biggest private donor to it. Some $18 million of the Irri’s annual budget of $100 million comes from the Gates Foundation. That annual budget may surprise some: That big? But, unknown to the younger generations of Filipinos, as well as Asians who have grown up on better and healthier varieties of rice developed at the Irri, “the world’s premier research organization dedicated to reducing poverty and hunger through rice science” (as it describes itself) now has offices in 17 countries. Its headquarters in Los Baños is but the global base of a humanitarian scientific endeavor that has seen the Irri, since its founding in 1960, bring its motto—“Rice Science for a Better World”—to diverse places where the grain serves as the staple food to billions of people, from Bangladesh in Asia to Burundi in Africa.

Time was when the Philippines had preeminence in Southeast Asia not only in rice research and development but also in production, thanks to the Irri. Scientists from Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and other neighboring countries came to study and learn from the institute, and brought home with them new ways of growing the staple crop and creating sustainable ways to improve rice farming and food production in their countries. The Philippines, meanwhile, lost the initiative along the way; by the post-Marcos years it had settled in a most unenviable

position: Once a world leader in rice production, it now had to import rice to feed its population. By 2008 it had become the world’s largest importer of rice, buying 1.8 million tons from countries it had once mentored on the subject. A cruel irony, and just one more affliction on a country that can’t seem to get its act together after the ravages of the Marcos dictatorship.

Gates’ staunch support for the Irri should help reboot the government’s efforts, if any, for national rice sufficiency. The institute jump-started the “Green Revolution” in Asia that saved tens of millions of people from hunger and disease. What are the bright minds in government doing to access that deep, invaluable knowledge to get us out of our chronic rice deficiency?