In a conversation with former Senator Joey Lina, host of “Sagot Ko Yan” television program, DA Secretary William Dar said that he and his team are working feverishly, 24/7, to address the rice/palay price turbulence spawned by the disastrous rice tariffication law.
It looks like the good secretary needs more than 24 hours a day to manage not only the rice/palay issue but also the other urgent problems plaguing a sinking agricultural sector. GDP-wise, the sector now accounts for a lilliputian 8 percent. And yet, the sector still employs a quarter of the labor force – over 10 million. These workers and their families constitute the poorest and the most vulnerable in Philippine society.
Weeks after his appointment, Secretary Dar had to oversee the culling of over 7,400 pigs due to the African swine fever outbreak in Rizal, Bulacan and Quezon City. The “Ber” months of 2019 are likely to be pork-less. They do not bode well for the country.
And yet, there are equally pressing problems on other agricultural fronts. In a dialogue with Dar on September 11, a group of farmer leaders and agricultural researchers led by Dr. Ted Mendoza of the UP Los Banos and the Integrated Rural Development Foundation raised the following concerns:
First, the never-ending crisis of the coconut industry. The country’s coconut farmers have been reeling from the low, low prices that they have been getting from the traders: P3-P4 for a whole nut, and P12-P15 for a kilo of copra. At these prices, a hectare of coconuts can earn a farmer at the most P5,000 quarterly. Some coconut farmers in the “interior” lands have already stopped harvesting coconuts because of the added cost of transport.
Second, the never-ending crisis of the sugar industry. The Philippines is now a major sugar importer. Sugar farmers and planters denounce the adverse impact of sugar import liberalization and the TRAIN tax on sugar-based products. They also complain that they have been losing from the low sugar recovery rate that the 30 or so sugar mills in the country have been declaring.
Third, the never-ending crisis facing the producers of other agricultural crops such as vegetables in the Cordillera, tobacco in the Ilocos region, abaca in the Bicol region, rubber in Mindanao, and so on, because of missing government support, weak rural infrastructures and lack of processing facilities. The coastal fishing communities are also at a loss regarding the declining fish catch due to the destruction of the mangroves and other breeding areas, overfishing, poaching and illegal practices by the big commercial fishing boats, and, yes, fishing in Philippine waters by the Chinese and other foreign fishing vessels.
Dr. Ted Mendoza sums up the major “sins” committed by the government, past and present, in agriculture: Insufficient investment in irrigation and critical rural infrastructures, which are often damaged or destroyed by landslides and flash floods; missing R & D in support of the sector; low support for credit, marketing and post-harvest assistance to small farmers; non-implementation of the various modernization programs, including the Agricultural Fisheries and Modernization Act of 1996; widespread degradation of the soil due to poor soil conservation and non-adoption of good environmental practices; narrow implementation of the agrarian reform law, which has been focused mainly on the transfer of land to agrarian reform beneficiaries (neglecting in the process the task of transforming the beneficiaries to become organized and productive farmers); and the absence of industry-agriculture linkages.
In addition to the foregoing, Rene Pamintuan, a concerned logistics expert, bewails the absence of an integrated human resource development program for the farming population. Paging DepEd, TESDA and CHED! He also asks: Why is the DA trying to develop a registry of traders and millers, and yet, there is no registry of farmer-producers and the products they are producing?
What then can be done?
The Integrated Rural Development Foundation, which opposed the rice tariffication law in 2018 and which was among the first to alert the nation on the woeful situation of the palay farmers in the post-tariffication months, listed some “doables” for consideration of the new DA secretary and the Duterte administration. For brevity’s sake, these are summarized as follows:
One, agricultural development requires an integrated approach, not a piecemeal or “por piraso” policy intervention. The rice tariffication law is an example of the latter. The proponents of the said law simply opted for trade liberalization without addressing the adjustment and transition challenges that the palay farmers have had to face. The law provides for the distribution of hybrid seeds and agricultural machinery, and yet the agencies mandated to do the distribution are not even ready for this task. And it is after the injury has been inflicted on the palay farmers that the government is now talking about the importance of delivering credit assistance and setting up safety nets for the affected palay farmers.
Incidentally, Neda-PIDS, the government institution that pushed for the rice tariffication law, predicted the likely adverse impact of the law on the palay farmers. And yet Neda-PIDS failed to come up with the safety nets and transition measures needed to soften the tariffication’s impact.
In its 2017-2018 Economic Monitor, Neda-PIDS wrote that under tariffication:
“… the impact on domestic rice prices could be profound. Domestic prices will eventually converge with world prices plus tariff (under the status quo, the difference is a whopping 66% of the wholesale level). Given that rice is the country’s dominant crop, millions of farmers will be affected…“
Second, the government should abandon the aimless and mindless liberalization program that the government technocrats, in supposed compliance with the WTO, are trying to promote for the sector. Globalization is war. It requires Team Philippines to get its act together and to do some strategizing, such as transforming winners into real winners and the vulnerables into survivors and eventually winners. The Philippines should learn from the US, EU and China, all of which are prepared to support their domestic agricultural producers by providing needed assistance and even intervention in the agricultural trading and production systems. As a former EU agriculture minister put it, agriculture is not just a sector to be nurtured and protected; it is part of their culture, history and civilization.
Third, the government should make up its mind – should it put the small farmer at the center of agricultural development or should it rely on big agribusiness corporations as the leaders in agricultural transformation? If it is the former, then the early pronouncement of Secretary Dar on the need to transform the small farmer into an “agri-preneur” makes sense. The problem is that the needed transformation programs such as an integrated human resource development, integrated support system and value chain upgrading for small-farmer development are not in place.
Fourth, the country needs to preserve its eroding and thinning agricultural land. A just and inclusive land use law is clearly a must. Widespread land conversions must stop. In fact, many are wondering if the palay production crisis shall be used by the urban land developers and mall builders as an opportunity to “bank” more lands for non-agricultural purposes. A National Land Use Plan, focused on the preservation of the country’s remaining agricultural land, should be enacted by a reform-minded Congress – now!
Fifth and finally, the government should institutionalize food security/agricultural sovereignty as the overall guiding framework in programming agricultural policies at the community, municipal, provincial and regional levels. As it is, the Philippine food system is clearly broken – broken by the aimless and mindless liberalization program, broken by the trading-importation operations of the smugglers and cartels, and broken by the lack of support to the country’s own food producers.
What then is food security/agricultural sovereignty? A 2002 Rome Declaration by an NGO/CSO Forum put it as follows:
“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural, labor, fishing, food and land policies, which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food, which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food-producing resources and the ability to sustain themselves and their societies.”