Every year, academic institutions go through the process of choosing their commencement speaker, making sure that the selected speaker’s personal values and life experiences are in consonance with and supportive of the institution’s own values system, or that the speaker’s personal involvement in the institution’s adopted corporate social responsibility.
Henry Lim Bon Liong is this year’s commencement speaker of Foundation University.
Not well known in academic circles and even in the business sector in the likes of Gokongwei, Tan Caktiong, Sia, or Uytengsu, Henry Lim Bon Liong is founder and chief executive officer of SL Agritech Corp., a relatively newbie in the agri-business, but is now the largest and most aggressive producer of hybrid rice in the Philippines — a feat which earned him the moniker “Rice Man of the Philippines.”
Henry Lim Bon Liong belongs to one of the migrant Chinese families in the Philippines, son of Maria Co Chiao Ti Lim and Lim Seh Leng. The family lived in a one—room apartment without any toilet, and they couldn’t speak Tagalog. Through sheer hard work and determination, his father started Sterling Bookbinding and Sterling Family Photo Album, and subsequently, the family gained Filipino citizenship. In 1976, Henry’s father died and as the eldest, Henry took over the business.
Henry Lim studied at Letran College, the University of the Asia & the Pacific, and at the University of the Philippines where he obtained a degree in mechanical engineering.
Through his astute and entrepreneurial genius, Sterling Paper Products Ent., Inc. diversified to other businesses which include a conglomerate of successful business enterprises ranging from greeting cards, school and office supplies, toys, real estate, call center, importation of office supplies, and agribusiness in such companies as: CBS Inc. (Central Book Store); Straight Lines International Inc.; (greeting cards, gift wrappers, puzzles, board games and wall charts); Expressions Stationary Shop Inc.; SP Properties Inc.; Expressions Center for Learning; SL Agritech Corp.; Mart One Discount Store; and Sterling Global Call Center Inc. Sterling products are exported to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Egypt, Latin America, South America and the United States.
Among Lim’s business ventures, SL Agritech Corp. — a company engaged in the research, development and production of superior hybrid rice seeds, and which supplies agri-chemical and corn products — is probably “closest to his heart”.
He loves to relate his story on how he, with some divine intervention, got involved in hybrid rice production.
In 1998, Lim met the ‘Father of Hybrid Rice’ and China’s National Treasure, a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Prof. Yuan Long Ping, who encouraged and taught him how to produce a variety of rice that promises to increase the yield of farmers.
The Professor sent his scientists to the Philippines to teach Lim the technology of developing hybrid rice varieties suitable to the Philippines’ condition.
To promote the development, commercialization, and growth of hybrid rice technology in the country, Henry put up SL Agritech Corp., named after his father. The venture was not an instant success.
Lim’s first trial crop was in a 40-hectare area in Laguna. The International Rice Research Institute provided him rice seeds. He invested heavily on research which was a failure in the beginning. For two years, SL Agritech produced promising varieties but could not stabilize the parental line.
In a vehicular accident involving his family, he lost his mother and brother, but he survived despite suffering several injuries himself. Two months after this incident, Lim was about to give up pursuing the hybrid rice venture when one early morning of January 17, 2001, “Professor Zhang, our lead scientist in the field, saw my mother, as if in a dream, and she directed him to go to the rice fields to inspect the rice flowers. It took him all morning to look at all the flowers in the 40-hectare field. Just the day before, his inspection produced a negative result, and they were about to clear the fields to start all over again. That morning, with the guidance of my mother, he found what he was looking for in Plot no. 8,” Lim narrates. He decided to call the hybrid variety SL8H after his father (Lim Seh Leng) and Plot no. 8.
As an offshoot of the government’s drive to disseminate hybrid rice technology, the Hybrid Rice Commercialization Program was formally launched in 2001, and ties among SL Agritech Corp., the Department of Agriculture, and the Philippine Rice Research Institute were forged.
To date, the company has three other seed production farms with a total land size of 1,500 hectares. As of 2004, it has distributed hybrid rice seeds to about 100,000 hectares of farmland, almost 50 percent of the 230,000 hectares of hybrid rice area in the country.
The success of SL-8H led to the company’s accreditation by institutions like the IRRI, PhilRice, and the National Seed Industry Council.
In 2002, the Anvil Executive Club, a business organization of young Filipino Chinese entrepreneurs cited Lim for his “entrepreneurial leadership efforts in bringing China’s famous rice hybrid technology to rural Filipino farmers and for supporting the National Government’s goal of rice-sufficiency and agricultural technology.”
He was also cited for his philanthropic involvement in donating over 20 public school buildings to rural barangays in Bulacan and Cavite under the program “Operation Barrio Schools.”
In 2005, he was recognized as one of the “Emerging Master Entrepreneurs” by the SGV Foundation Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs of tThe Year Philippines Program.
Lim is often asked if a hybrid is the same as GMO, and he explains that a hybrid is never a GMO, and that the term “hybrid” simply means getting the very superior parental lines and putting the two together because the rice has always been a self-pollinating plant. Inside the small rice flower are both the male and female, so there is no cross-pollination.
SL Agritech’s vision, “rice technology for mankind,” is something that Henry Lim takes to heart. He is convinced that the technology he had introduced could be an answer to the country’s widespread poverty and hunger.
He said he also believes that the technology can generate more jobs and improve Filipino farmers’ economic and living conditions.
Moreover, the technology uses environment-friendly farming and pest management practices to help preserve agricultural land for generations to come.
“I would like to help farmers improve their standard of living, and make our country self-sufficient in food, especially rice, and when that happens, I will consider it the greatest accomplishment in my life,” says Lim.
Foundation University’s six-year old advocacy aimed at creating a culture of rice conservation under its “Rice is Life” Program as a strategy to achieve one of the Millennium Development Goals, the eradication of hunger and poverty, jives perfectly with Henry Lim Bon Liong’s personal and business philosophy.
