Photo courtesy: carnegieendowment.org
Amidst the din that came on the heels of the dubious blankety-blank General Appropristion Budget and the precipitate impeachment of VP Sara Duterte is the looming food crisis that the country faces.
Both the economic advisers and agriculture officials have raised the spectre of catastrophic shortage of food particularly rice supply.
This administration had always relied on importation despite the fact that the country’s economic backbone is agriculture industry. For awhile the farmers were extruberant when, early in his presidency, BongBong Marcos assumed the role as Secretary of the Department of Agriculture.
He promised the consumers, as centerpiece of his personal platform, to bring down the cost of rice to ₱20.00 per kilo.
But then early on something is flawed in the President’s strategy in addressing anemic rice productivity. He rejected the offer of China, the world’s biggest producer of fertilizer, to sell to the Philippines cheap fertilizer on a government-to-government deal. Instead the bright boys in his sanctum sanctorum rejected the idea maybe thinking that it contravense the BBM’s confrontational stand with China and its cozy relationship with US President Biden.
The other insidious agenda of the hungry detergents around Marcos is to resort to importation of rice, onions, garlic and even galunggong. Not contented with their stupidly brilliant idea, they even reduce the tariff on rice from 35% to 15%! The propaganda was and still is to flood the market with cheap rice and other commodities which never happened to date.
In effect the government has virtually become the worst enemy of farmers and fishermen. Low in morale and lacking in incentives, farmers resorted to just producing what their families need and for their modest upkeep.
The Department of Agriculture is bereft of solutions. Last week the DA announced that it will import onions. The onion growers grumbled because the news came at the time when they are about to harvest their crops.
It looks like the rice exporting countries like Vietnam have ceased exporting full-grain rice our DA officials are now justifying broken rice for human consumption as it is cheaper. Vietnam’ s broken grains are actually sold cheap as these are intended for hog feed or flour. Of course there is nothing wrong with eating broken rice but we are talking here of the regular full-grain rice which Vietnam and India exports.
The DA is so focussed with importation the National Irrigation Administration cannot even think of rehabilitating irrigation systems.
Agriculture Industry was at its peak during the term of the late Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, Sr. Sadly it is being wrecked by Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos, Jr. to the point that we are now facing a looming crisis.
