A new age of agriculture beckons

The Department of Agriculture has been put on center stage as the Duterte administration’s economic team looks to the farm sector as crucial in keeping favorable macroeconomic scenarios, such as a slow rate of price increases.

According to Finance Undersecretary Gil S. Beltran, key support for food production that will help maintain low inflation include factors that are not necessarily new in

discussions on economic development—development of infrastructure, availability of credit, and insurance coverage for farm produce.

Arguably, providing such support requires that the purse holders (economic managers) and the people on the ground (the Department of Agriculture) are on the same page.

Such level of teamwork is apparently not yet achieved, with the administration already in its seventh month.

“The journey has been tough and hard for us, simply because some of our activities actually were constrained by the fact that the budget for the (second) half of the year [2016 was] designed by the previous administration,” Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said in his most recent press briefing, held in December.

“We’re not saying these programs [laid out in the 2016 national budget] are not relevant to the vision of the current leadership [but] this situation actually somehow tied our hands in really implementing drastic reforms in the agriculture department,” Piñol said.

This predicament extends to 2017, the budget for which was similarly designed during the Aquino administration.

Piñol had proposed an initiative he dubbed Rice Productivity Enhancement, intended to help rice farmers affected by the El Niño to recover from its effects by giving them rice seeds and fertilizer.

But the Duterte administration’s economic managers did not take to the proposal, which called for an P18-billion additional budget for 2017 alone.

Even then, the DA has been able to carry on with what Piñol himself described as “reactive actions to a specific problems,” especially in the aftermath of destructive typhoons.

These include the aforementioned activity of distributing inputs (seeds and planting material as well as fertilizer); dispersal of animals such as chickens, pigs and goats; endowment of boats and fishing gear as well as tractors, grains dryers and other farm technologies.

“But at the same time, we also started drafting long-term programs which we believe would serve as the foundation of the new agriculture and fisheries [policy] under the Duterte administration and beyond,” Piñol said.

Last Dec. 1, the DA launched a national color-coded agriculture map—depicting production efficiency and land use— which Piñol said would serve as the basis for future agricultural programs and goals.

Also, the DA started the conduct of a new national food consumption quantification survey and Piñol ordered the start of a nationwide validation of all agricultural data and statistics “which have proven to be inaccurate and outdated.”

“It was because of this that I issued an order for a nationwide validation of all agricultural data starting from the ground,” the secretary said. “I believe we cannot do sound planning if the data that we use and the statistics we use and rely on are not accurate.”

These are encouraging words from the secretary who, in numerous engagements with reporters, have declined to give the usual forecast production data, citing his style as that of a farmer who is more concerned about how his farm looks rather than crunching numbers.

Even then, the avowed move to improve farm statistics will hopefully not entail reinventing the wheel by failing to tap international best practices, since the need to advance official statistics—including agricultural data—has been cited internationally as a requisite to achieving the goal of putting an end to hunger.

In fact, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap) convened last month its Committee Statistics to discuss regional initiatives on ensuring the appropriateness and reliability of economic statistics, population and social statistics, civil registration and vital statistics, disaster-related statistics, agricultural and rural statistics.

Shamshad Akhtar, UN undersecretary general and executive secretary of Escap, said resolving these gaps in guidelines and standards would require statistical communities to pool ideas, experiences and resources to make innovative breakthroughs.

The value of drawing from a global resource of knowledge and best practices—to help attain goals as quickly as possible —is underscored by the urgent matters that the farm sector is facing. For example, World Trade Organization-approved import curbs meant to protect the domestic rice industry are expiring by June 30.

While Malacañang has not made any move toward yet another possible extension of the quantitative restrictions on milled rice imports, Piñol is adamant in pushing for keeping the limits for at least two years to help Filipino farmers prepare better against low-priced foreign grains.

Still, Piñol said that in case his position does not hold sway in the Cabinet, “we are prepared for that (a new rice market scenario).”

“We are looking at other commodities which would fill in whatever shortage or gap in the staple food production,” he said.

“I have directed the DA Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) to intensify the study on adlai, which is an indigenous plant found in mountainous areas that people have been consuming as their staple food,” he said.

Piñol said he had also directed the BAR and Philippine Rice Research Institute to formulate the ideal combination of rice and white corn “so that we will be able to come up with the perfect mix that would boost our food supply.”

The secretary’s plans hark back to the rice corn grits, developed and available at the University of the Philippines as well as from Philippine Leading Infinite Logistics Inc. under the brand “Rico Corn Rice.”

Further, Piñol is pushing for the start of a program for crossbreeding white corn and a glutinous variety, to make corn more palatable as a staple food.

“All these are part of efforts to ensure that there would be enough food for the Filipino people,” he said. “I believe these things we’ve started will contribute to the realization of the President’s commitment to ensure that food is available.”

Undoubtedly, Piñol has hit the ground running when he assumed office months ago, but the agriculture chief needs a deeper harmony of visions with the rest of the Cabinet. For the DA cannot run by itself just as food producers are not separate from the rest of the economy.