In the National Anti-Poverty Sectoral Summit held late last week, there are indications there is nothing strategically different with past antipoverty government programs, except the fact the Left is now well represented, led by National Anti-Poverty Commission Chairman and Secretary Liza Largoza-Masa of Gabriela fame.
President Duterte is right in involving the Left directly in governance, which is a double-edged sword. He has given the Left the chance, for the first time, to implement what they have long been fighting against—the inequities in society. On the other hand, he has effectively disarmed them with burden to prove their worth and show a better way to bail out people from poverty. And if something fouls up, the Left can no longer blame the government but themselves.
Red not expert? You cannot question probably the sincerity of many revolutionaries as they make sacrifices of their lives to create change for the better, ironically, through violent means. They are inspired by the likes of revolutionary icon Che Guevarra, who once said that it may sound ridiculous, but “revolutionaries are inspired by the greatest feelings of love.”
However, as it is said, “the road to perdition or hell is paved with good intentions,” which is true with history replete with stories of how revolutions failed as their leaders lack the expertise of running an economy. The Left may know at destroying, but poor at building. It is good at political organizing and agitation and propaganda (“Agit-prop”), but are poor in business and development.
The Left always blames poverty more on the oligarchic control of the economy by “some 41 families,” and what they claim are problem, like “bureaucrat-capitalism,” “feudalism” and “neocolonialism,” which they say can only be resolved genuinely through a bloody clash or class struggle, and replaced with socialist central planning, which history has totally failed in many countries.
What the Left lacks is the expertise in livelihood development, finance, marketing and overall project management, which are vital in running business ventures that increase the pie.
Free market has done no better? If the Left is bound to fail, the freer market system, in place for about three to four decades now, has not seemed to have done any better. In the dog-eat-dog free-market system, growth does not trickle down much to the poor partly due to an “Elite Capture.”
Based on an Asian Development Bank (ADB) study done on 51 developing countries, for every 1-percent increase in GDP or income, poverty is reduced by 1.5 percent and even as high as 2 percent among Asian countries, except the Philippines.
We’ve had cases of high growth rates in past years and, yet, poverty rate even worsened. More so, in agriculture, where about two-thirds of those living below the poverty line is based, which simply agriculture and the fishery sector has been performing dismally for many decades now.
Records show because of our poor performance in agriculture, we have reduced rural poverty slightly from 46.9 percent in 2000 to only 40 percent by 2014. In contrast, Thailand reduced rural poverty from 51.5 percent in 2001 to 13.9 percent in 2013, and in a much shorter period. Indonesia reduced rural poverty to 13.8 percent in 2014, Vietnam down to 17.4 percent in 2010, and Malaysia to 8.4 percent as early as 2009.
Again, the Philippines posted GDP growth of 7 percent in the second quarter of 2016, besting China’s growth of 6.7 percent, Vietnam’s 5.6 percent, Indonesia’s 5.2 percent, Malaysia’s 4.0 percent and Thailand’s 3.5 percent. However, agriculture declined by 2.1 percent from April to June this year, which is the fifth consecutive quarter of declines. We hope the government can reverse this in time.
Technology is crucial. Government’s flagship antipoverty program is the Conditional Cash Transfer renamed Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, which is consumptive and mendicant in nature and, therefore, not sustainable.
Instead, these billions be poured in sustainable production-oriented, not market-oriented, technologies, which can be farmed on a work for pay arrangement. We can learn from US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “who created 4 million jobs in a month’s time ” in the Great Depression of 1930s.
One such technology developed by UP scientist Dr. Saturnina Halos is an extraction of microbial inoculants from the sturdy “cogon” grass and into an organic bio-fertilizer that increases yields of any crop from 15 percent to over 100 percent and saves on regular fertilizers by 50 percent. It is also convenient to use with one 100-gram pack of the powdered product, which is mixed with water to treat seeds and seedlings good for 1 hectare.
Cogon is known for surviving without water and fertilizer as it can sequester nitrogen from the air for its nutrients, and can survive even on mountain dew (hamog) that condenses on its leaves. The product extracts from cogon are also good for tree planting as they reduce the current mortality rates.
Turned down by past administrations, in favor of inferior and more expensive technologies, Halos’s products have been exported to other Asian countries, which are benefiting from this Pinoy technology.
We must not rest on our laurels, but adopt better innovations copied from us. We also need not reinvent the wheel as there are hundreds of technologies already developed that only have to be transferred locally. In aquaculture, for instance, while our average tilapia production is only five to eight pieces per square meter of water, the technology abroad can now hit as many 250 to 500 pieces, in what is now called fish factories.
So why not mobilize the organizing skills of the Left, but be guided by learned experts and on technologies, to be matched by concessional financing facilities, like Bangko Sentral’s Credit Surety Fund for the poor. I believe it is through science and technology that we can catch up by increasing the pie, by involving the poor themselves, who are thus assured of a slice of the pie.
You cannot reduce poverty by increasing wages, or hiring more unproductive people in the government, or illegally confiscating property the communist way. It is also only by increasing production substantially, through better technologies involving the poor, that you can employ the poor massively, and with more production, prices of food and other commodities, likewise, drop, making them affordable to the poor.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com
1 comment
Rural poverty and the marginalized sectors in the countryside should have access to technology, capital and market. How can this be achieved when commerce and trade are dominated by the landed elite, big business and political dynasties, some acting as warlords? The NAPC in the last administration identified the top 10 provinces where poverty is at its highest incidence. I suggest the author to review the political structure and agricultural productivity in these areas. Lastly in the early ’70s we were already aware of an organic fertilizer available in the market then and also the Sagana Farm model championed by the Bureau of Plant Industry. And yes even bee pollination was developed earlier on for vegetables and fruit trees. Ask the Israeli Embassy how important bees are to agriculture!