LAST week Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol keynoted the first Aurora-Korea Development Cooperation Forum in Baler, Aurora, attended by government and private-sector delegations from the Philippines and Korea.
I worked with Secretary Piñol— who was then a newly elected governor of North Cotabato—in the late 1990s, when I myself headed the Department of Agriculture (DA). We worked on the Mindanao Rural Development Program (MRDP), where local government executives and other members of regional development councils helped identify the projects they needed to boost development in their respective jurisdictions.
Then-North Cotabato Governor Piñol asked me why Manila puts together programs and initiates projects that do not always meet the needs of local communities. That conversation triggered and motivated me to the making of a five-year Mindanao Rural Development Program (MRDP), which was financially supported by the World Bank, was thrice renewed and has now become the Philippine Rural Development Program. We located the center of the program in Kidapawan, North Cotabato and, from there, it radiated throughout the rest of Mindanao.
Under the MRDP, for example, agriculture’s requirements were based on inputs supplied by “on-the-ground” stakeholders. It reversed the top-down approach and made it bottom-up planning and implementation.
Secretary Piñol described the road map he made for agriculture and fisheries before the Aurora- Korea Development Cooperation Forum in Baler. He said the DA is currently conducting a nationwide survey to determine the type of soil in each province, considering climactic conditions, rainfall patterns and other factors affecting agriculture. The end-goal would be to have a nationwide color-coded agriculture and fisheries map to guide farmers and fishermen. Secretary Piñol described this as “area-specific agriculture.”
The DA will initiate and hasten a National Food Consumption Quantification Study to measure how much food Filipinos eat on a monthly basis and identify where this food comes from. One aim of this study is to prepare the agricultural sector to meet the food needs of Filipinos 15 to 20 years from now.
Another initiative in increasing agricultural productivity is through a smarter, more commonsensical modernization and mechanization program. Secretary Piñol lamented the lack of planning in some instances where the DA—through foreign grants—would build rice mills that aren’t operational because they either lack electricity or were far from the grid. He said farmers were complaining that the equipment they’d be given were prone to breaking down, from lack of maintenance training and spare parts.
He discussed about strategic and effective post-harvest, storage and processing facilities. This aligns with the drive to modernize agriculture as well as to eliminate middlemen who control artificially the prices that keep farmers poor. Secretary Piñol said the DA is currently devising a program where farmers can deposit their harvest in storage facilities, receive a money guarantee equivalent to the prevailing price at the time of deposit, and then can later decide to officially sell them should prices increase.
Secretary Piñol also cited the need to provide easy financing to farmers and fishermen. The DA is looking into rolling out a mechanism for allowing poor farmers to take out small loans (around P100,000, for instance) without collateral and at very minimal interest. The secretary deplored the practice of certain government banks, like Land Bank of the Philippines, which provide billions of financing to huge corporations not involved in agriculture, but find it difficult to support a backyard farmer asking for only a couple of thousands of pesos.
These are but some salient points in Secretary Piñol’s straightforward plan for the DA. They are pragmatic measures, employing modern technologies for productivity and security and projecting a clear vision for Philippine agriculture and fisheries. Clearly, here is a plan of building up Philippine agriculture that is literally down-to-earth.
E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com.