Dar and DA’s 6 priorities

During his first few days as agriculture secretary, William Dar has moved swiftly and impressively on six agriculture priorities which were identified and submitted to President Duterte and former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol in 2016.

They were discussed in two meetings by the heads of five coalitions that make up the Agri Fisheries Alliance (AFA). AFA represents major agriculture stakeholders: farmers and fisherfolk (Alyansa Agrikultura), agribusiness (Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food), science and academe (Coalition for Agriculture Modernization in the Philippines), rural women (Pambansang Kilusan ng mga Kababaihan sa Kanayunan, and multisector leaders (Agriculture Fisheries 2025).

In a July 27 AFA assessment of why agriculture grew by only 1.6 percent compared to industry’s 6.8 percent in the last six years, a major cause cited was that the six agricultural priorities were not addressed properly.

On Aug. 10, in a three-hour meeting between the coalition heads and Dar, decisive action was taken on the six priorities. Here are Dar’s stance on the six priorities categorized under governance, support services and agriculture reform.

Governance
1. On the importance of road maps (what to do—resulting in effectiveness), Dar identified as one of his eight paradigms the formulation by professionals of road maps. He wants them done at both the national and provincial levels. Regarding management systems like ISO 9000 (on how to do it to promote efficiency), Dar will ensure all units will have ISO 9000.

They will all have the common twin objective of ani (production) and kita (earnings). The “ani, kita” mantra is an inspiring unifying cry for the nation to follow in agriculture: government, farmers and fisherfolk, and the business sector.

2.Regarding stakeholder participation, Dar vowed to strengthen further the legislated public-private Agri Fisheries Councils by working on the national, provincial and municipal levels. He also wants to expand the roles of the farmers/ fisherfolk and business by making them cochairs of the government in all important committees and task forces.

Support Services

3. Our 17,000 agriculture municipal extension workers, supervised by LGUs, are often not utilized effectively because of inadequate government support. With weak extension, our farmers are being left behind by our Asean neighbors. Dar is instituting a new paradigm where the municipal extension workers will be closely coordinated by the provincial LGUs. They would, in turn, get much more support from the DA and the underground utilized state universities and colleges. Close partnership with the business sector for both production and markets will enable the extension worker to provide farmers the services they have been missing all these years.
4. On our inadequate agriculture credit where the gap is now P375 billion, Dar is working closely with financial institutions, especially Land Bank. Already, this bank has announced ground breaking initiatives: increasing agriculture loans from P222 billion in 2018 to P350 billion in 2022, lending from 800,000 to 3 million small farmers and fisherfolk, doubling the number of lending officers, and increasing the rural branch network by 40 percent. Dar will also work for much larger and creative guarantee and insurance schemes, using business and farmer/fisherfolk input to achieve this.

Agriculture Reform
5. Dar will take the best international negotiating positions for agriculture, as well as work for maximum appropriate subsidies (including possible WTO-approved agriculture special safeguards to support our embattled rice farmers today). He announced the creation of an antismuggling task force with government, business, and farmer/fisherfolk leaders, working in close cooperation with the Bureau of Customs. It was noted that in the past antismuggling efforts, DA had the least participation and involvement compared to DTI, DOF, and DOJ.
6. Dar will creatively address reform areas such as water, where agriculture uses 72 percent. He will work for a variety of high impact lower cost and faster turn around small irrigation systems (eg, small water impounding systems, mini water dams, water encatchment basins) Inefficient farming schemes, specially in neglected agrarian reform areas, will be improved through economies of scale, extensive transfer of technology, and multicropping. The coconut levy will be harnessed to improve the welfare of coconut farmers through a much better coconut road map and effective implementation mechanisms.

Dar’s first few days on these priorities augur well for a coming renaissance in agriculture.