Paje to jumpstart $1-billion food security program

MANILA, Philippines - Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Ramon Paje will try to jumpstart the stalled $1-billion food security program of San Miguel Corp. and the Kuok Group.

In an interview over the weekend, Paje said he would try to revive the stalled $1 billion food security program of the SMC-Kuok Group that was first announced in July 2008 in a lavish ceremony attended by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Kuok Group chairman Robert Kuok, then Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, SMC chairman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. and SMC president Ramon Ang.

SMC and the Kuok Group had agreed to jointly invest $1 billion to develop a million hectares of idle land to help boost production of rice, corn, sugar and other crops in the Philippines. The project was supposed to address the critical food security issue.

Unfortunately, after the much publicized signing of the memorandum of agreement on the $1 billion joint food security program, not much has been heard about the project.

The Departments of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Agriculture (DA) were supposed to help identify idle lands which the SMC-Kuok partnership could utilize for their food project.

This time around, however, Paje revealed that the DENR, along with the DA and the Department of Agrarian Reform, have agreed to actively pursue the utilization of some eight million hectares of idle lands located nationwide for President Aquino’s own food security program, as well as for investments in forestry and tree planting.

Paje said the DENR has initially identified a total 15,000 hectares or about 200 hectares each in all provinces in the country that can be immediately used for food production, forestry and tree planting.

The identified areas, Paje said, include upland areas which current Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said could be used for the cultivation of rice and other suitable crops.

SMC, for its own project, had said that it would provide financial and technical expertise for the development and cultivation of the food plantations, the produce of which all would be bought by SMC.

However, SMC, whose core business used to be food and beverage, in the past two years since the MOA food security project signing, has decided to diversify into other businesses like energy, mining and toll roads.