Wrong focus on rice

MANILA, Philippines - Why haven’t we Filipinos extricated ourselves from decades of grinding poverty? Whose fault is it, the government’s, the people’s, or the farmers who till our lands?

A new book, “Food for Thought/How Agribusiness is Feeding the World,” proposes solutions to our historical problem of pervasive poverty.

The author, Rolando T. Dy, an executive of the University of Asia and the Pacific and a noted international expert on agribusiness, points an accusing finger at government policies, ineffective use of public funds and, most of all, a misguided focus on becoming self-sufficient in rice.

“Food for Thought” has a global scope, with a sweeping tour d’horizon of the global agribusiness scene, identifying the major countries, companies and markets active in the sector.

But its chapters on the Philippines and the ASEAN are must-reading for Filipinos who wonder how the food on our tables gets there from the farm. And we’re talking about farms not only across the archipelago but around the world.

The book tells us who the big players in agribusiness are, from food suppliers to farm tractor makers, from the chocolate houses of Cadbury and Hershey to the winemakers of the western and southern hemispheres, from McDonald’s and our own Jollibee to the vast oil-palm plantations of southeast Asia. And we thought agribusiness is just scattered small-scale cottage operations in the tiny villages of the world!

Dy, executive director of the UA&P’s Center for Food and Agriculture, takes an iconoclastic view about the Philippines’ historical bias toward the rice subsector, to the detriment of other areas like coconut farming and aquaculture. Dy is also the dean of the UA&P’s School of Management. 

In the book, Dy addresses the key issue of why poverty persists in the Philip-pines. He lists 10 questions whose answers are vital to Philippine agricul-ture. The questions include: Why is Philippine agriculture underperforming? Why are agricultural exports dismal? Why is rural poverty high?

Dy contends that rice has historically received preferential treatment from successive administrations while other key sectors get a smaller portion of budgetary resources. He writes that weather and the absence of natural irrigation systems, relative to other neighboring countries, work against success in rice-growing.

Dy lists his own prescriptions for how Philippine agriculture can be shifted to more productive and profitable production areas and thus, help solve the country’s chronic problem of rural poverty.

Former Agriculture Secretary Luis P. Lorenzo Jr. notes in the Foreword, the book “is meant for a wide range of readers: from analysts to students, from business executives to political leaders, and from professors to practitioners.”

The book would be valuable to researchers for its treasure of information about global agribusiness, including comprehensive statistics on producing countries and the key agribusiness companies around the world. Lorenzo adds that the reader will be surprised by the book’s “discoveries.” He must be talking about the extent of agribusiness’s reach and the familiar company names that we never thought are included in the roster of players in the sector. 

In an epilogue, Dy writes a “Memo to the Next [Philippine] President,“ in where he pleads with the country’s next leader to use scarce government resources for the agricultural sector with care and not as profligately as in the past.

Dy, who earned his Ph.D from the UA&P, holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the University of the Philippines and a master’s degree from the Center for Research and Communication, which later became the UA&P.

Hailing from Mindanao, the Philippines’ agribusiness zone, Dy has extensive international experience. He worked as an agriculture project economist at the World Bank, where he dealt with Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand. He is the author of several studies on agribusiness, agrarian reform and ASEAN cooperation, among topics. He has lectured both in the Philippines and abroad.

“Food for Thought” is a publication of the UA&P and the Comprehensive Initiative for the transformation of Organizations.

Inquiries may be addressed to UA&P, telephone 637-0912 locals 247, 345 and 211.

Leandro V. Coronel is a former spokesman for the World Bank in Washington, DC, and a writer of commentary in various publications.