By Lito Gagni / Special to BusinessMirror
FORMER Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor yesterday questioned the wisdom of allowing rice imports during the harvest season, as it hits the farmers with low palay prices that deepen their poverty.
Montemayor said the Philippines is the only country he knows that allows rice imports to enter the country during palay harvest, adding, in Filipino, “it’s not just the typhoons that kill them, but also the law.” He was referring to the Rice Tariffication Law which allowed any importer to bring in rice as long as the correct duties and taxes are paid.
The issue on rice imports was among the topics in the third leg of the Experts Forum sponsored by the Aliw Media Group. The forum dwelt on Agriculture, Agrarian Reform and Food Security and was held the Treston College in Bonifacio Global City.
During the forum, Treston College Chairman Efraim Genuino, who is now into farming, pitched what he dubbed the industrialization of agriculture to benefit the farmers, even as he noted the continuing decline in the share of agriculture to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), a key determinant in economic growth.
Genuino said agriculture’s in GDP has steadily declined yearly. In 2016, it accounted for 10.4 percent in output and in the next year, it went down to 10.1 percent. By 2018, agriculture output accounted for just 9.7 percent and in 2019, it went down further to 9.2 percent.
“This is a worrisome trend,” Genuino said, adding this could be addressed by allowing for industrialization in the agriculture sector, especially in rural areas, where farmers can have ready access for the market of their own produce. This, he said, will allow farmers to earn more so that economic growth comes about by having a vibrant economic community.
National Land Use
For Dr. Roberto Rañola Jr., national chairman of the Philippine Association of Agriculturists, the umbrella organization of licensed agriculturists, what is needed to arrest the decline in agriculture output is for congress to pass the National Land Use law to rationalize the ongoing land conversion practices that have resulted in haphazard conversion of farmlands to housing subdivisions.
In Los Baños in Laguna, he said, subdivisions and other commercial establishments have sprouted in what used to be farm lands by the road, resulting in a decline in agriculture output.
He also raised apprehension over the Mandanas-Garcia law which mandates the increase in the IRA allotments of local government units.
Rañola said the devolution of the Department of Agriculture budget to LGUs could have an adverse impact on the national government’s thrust for food sufficiency, since the LGUs may still need to have the technical knowhow to address the plight of farmers.
According to former congressman Jonathan de la Cruz, the proposed National Land Use policy has been filed every year in Congress, and yet failed to pass due to stiff opposition from businessmen affected by such a law.
De la Cruz recalled that one time, the House of Representatives was about to pass the law patterned after that of the Senate which was first able to muster enough votes. “But, a recess, a break was called,” he said, and the proposed law was scuttled. He declined to name the House leaders who caused such delay at that time.