Angara proposes 6-step program on rice

Senator Edgardo J. Angara, chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food and former Secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA), recommended 6 practical steps to solve the rice crisis.

The 6 measures are: irrigation, credit, post-harvest facilities, seeds, rice trading (NFA), and safety nets for the poor.

Angara said funding and personnel should be concentrated this year on the 1.4 million hectares of irrigated land. "Full support to the farmers in terms of credit and drying facilities should be provided to farmers in the irrigated areas."

He also recommended the mobilization of rural banks and thrift banks within the rice area. "The Land Bank, the Development Bank of the Philippines and the DA should provide financing to them for lending to rice farmers without delay, for the wet planting season beginning September."

Angara said the government should provide credit to seed producers to produce sufficient volume of certified and hybrid seeds in preparation for the wet planting season in September. "The increase in the conversion to certified and hybrid seeds are between 6-12 tons per hectare compared t 2.5 tons per hectare for ordinary seeds.

The governors and mayors in the rice areas should be subsidized to assist in the national rice program since they have under their control and supervision the provincial and municipal agriculturists who used to form the backbone of the extension program of the DA, he said.

According to him, the national government can motivate local executives by providing them farm-to-market roads and post harvest facilities as incentives, provincial agriculturists' monthly allowance, transportation and per diem.

To help the needy poor, he suggested a targeted rice assistance program be prepared. "The DSWD should prepare a register of the poorest in each municipality and city certified by the local government officials. A rice passbook will be issued to them for rice allotment."

Angara also suggested the revamp of the National Food Authority. The rice trading functions of the NFA shall be given to the private sector and limit the NFA to implement the rice and corn subsidy program so we can utilize the huge public funds spent by NFA in importation and trading to support the targeted rice aid program.

"In a 2007 review of NFA's operations, its projected accumulated losses in 2007 amounted to P48B while its outstanding loans is around P69B. Discounting the current rice crisis it currently mitigates, the review calculated that if NFA continues to operate as is, by 2010 its accumulated losses will hit P111B and its outstanding loans will reach P136B," he said.

And lastly, he emphasized on the significance of research and development in ensuring food security. "The long-term viability and sustainability of agriculture lies in more investment in R&D which requires massive training of agriculturists and other technologists in food and agriculture."

Today the Philippines spends only 0.l percent of GVA for R&D. China's example in this regard is instructive. In 2003, it increased its spending for R&D to 0.8 percent of GVA with dramatic results in farm productivity. No one goes hungry in China today, he noted.

The root cause of poverty and food dependency lies in underinvestment in agriculture. "We have the best master plan for agricultural modernization, AFMA, envied and copied by other countries and yet we have applied it inconsistently and erratically over the years", he said.

He stressed that what went wrong is we did not invest enough in agriculture. Despite all the obstacles our farmers face, they have successfully fed us through all these years. Yet we have had a long standing policy bias against them in favor of urban consumers, and we have not given them the appropriate levels of investment and policy support.

"The most decisive factor in all this is political leadership. We must have a clear, consistent and stable agriculture and food policy. Our burgeoning population, expected to grow to 100 million in three years, will become a huge challenge to agriculture and food security."