The disaster that is Agriculture (1)

In 2018, agriculture grew at less than 1 percent (0.56 percent). In the previous administration it did little better: an average of 1.2 percent a year. The population grew faster (1.6 percent), meaning less food produced per person. A disaster if ever there was one. Industry and Services both grew at just under 7 percent. Ask, why can’t Agriculture?

The Philippines has fertile soil, a generally favorable climate (typhoons notwithstanding), and enough people to do the farming, yet agriculture doesn’t perform as well as it certainly could.

The reasons are many. One of the most important being leadership. No Philippine President has given it the dedicated attention it must have. President Duterte now has the chance to change that, and should. The first thing he should do is gather a group of Filipino and international experts together in a working multi-day conference to develop a long-term plan for how to grow agriculture at at least 5 percent annually. A revolution in how agriculture is developed, supported, guided and run should be a major focus this year, and beyond.

A first step should be to split the Department of Agriculture by taking fisheries out of it to create a Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture or, at the least a semi-autonomous agency with full powers and a Cabinet level leader. Fishing is a vastly different activity to growing a crop in some soil. It needs concentrated focus on its problems and solutions, or we’ll soon be overfished and without this healthy food all should eat more of. The Philippines has over 250M ha of coastal waters and exclusive economic zone, including the Benham Rise that needs to be managed and protected.

Fish should be cheap and plentiful, not become scarcer and scarcer as is now happening (my wife sometimes can’t buy the fish we like — Lapu Lapu—as it’s not available in the Seaside market). Creating this department will require the necessary policy, financial, managerial and technical support to make it work, but supply of fish is too important not to do it.

A very important start has been made, and that was to take the National Food Authority (NFA) out of trading rice and controlling its trade.  This was the kind of courageous, positive step that needed to be taken that no previous president had the guts to do. The supply of rice is expected to be revolutionized by this action. 107 million Filipinos (I don’t know any Filipino who doesn’t eat rice with every meal, including breakfast. I think I’m the only one) will be getting cheaper rice. The President needs to ensure the law is not emasculated by a restrictive IRR. There are attempts being made by vested interests to do just that. They must be ignored. In the case of rice a 35 percent tariff is enough to protect farmers. But that’s only one crop, albeit the most important one.

Next in line is corn which goes principally to feed the animals we’ll later eat. Then coconut and tree crops like coffee, cacao, rubber and palm oil that have been left pretty much to their own devices. A majority of the coffee, cacao and palm oil we consume is imported because others countries produce it cheaper. The agri conference must find out why — and the solutions. Their crop area 4M ha is greater than rice’s 3M ha. Isn’t it about time to have an umbrella organization for these neglected crops where high poverty reigns?

Isn’t it interesting that all the crops that are not doing well have a government agency controlling them: The National Food Authority (NFA) for rice; the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA); the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA); The National Tobacco Administration (NTA)? I wonder if there’s a causality here.

One of the most damaging policies, if not the most is CARP, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. CARP has made Filipino farmers poorer, not richer as intended. Poverty incidence in CARP areas is 54 percent; it’s much lower, at 35 percent, in non-CARP areas. The non-tradability of CARP farms (a major weakness of the law) has destroyed the formal land market, prevented best use of farms, discouraged private investments and affected the development of formal credit. It’s like too many of the laws that come out of Congress, they are populace for the moment without enough thought to the real consequences down the road.

And it has ignored that some crops can only be produced competitively on a plantation. Sugar and bananas are but two of them. More next week.

E-mail: wallace_likeitis@wbf.ph