Food insecurity

In the early days of the pandemic, we were stricken by a serious sense of food insecurity. Supermarkets were hit by panic buying as a lockdown was declared.

Canned corned beef, sardines and basic commodities from milk, sugar and coffee were flying off the shelves. Even fresh produce was hard to find. Tomatoes and bananas were selling like gold, if you could find them.

As the lockdown progressed through its first weeks, it was difficult to get farm produce anywhere. The supply chain from the farms up north to the markets of Metro Manila was broken. Checkpoints were stopping our food supply from getting through.

A case in point was a photo of tomatoes that went viral on social media. Truckloads of tomatoes were being discarded by the farmers because a barangay checkpoint in Nueva Vizcaya would not let them pass.

The problem was eventually sorted out but not before it became clear how easy it is to starve the urban dwellers of Metro Manila.

On a broader level, food security has everything to do with having productive farmers who efficiently grow our food and are properly compensated for their effort. With our growing population, we should take drastic measures to make sure there will be enough food for everyone.

Agriculture Secretary William Dar briefed us at the Foundation for Economic Freedom via Zoom last week and he gave us a picture of where we are. Here is a snapshot he shared with us:

In rice, we grow 86 percent of what we need; Corn is 88 percent; coffee is 29 percent; onion is 61 percent; mongo is 49 percent; garlic is nine percent; pork is 86 percent; chicken is 93 percent; duck is 99 percent; carabeef is 65 percent; tilapia is 99.9 percent; tuna is 81 percent; roundscad is 97 percent; beef is 61 percent.

I guess for the most part, we are not doing that badly. But we can do a lot more. No Filipino should go hungry.

I got the impression from Sec Dar’s presentation that a significant problem is food logistics, specially during emergency situations. But even in normal times, getting the produce from the farmer to our urban markets is a problem. This is also why our farmers are always at the mercy of traders.

I can appreciate Sec Dar’s food security framework: farm consolidation; modernization; industrialization; export promotion and infrastructure development. I just wonder how far he can go, specially on farm consolidation.

We do need to improve farm productivity and efficiency. That is not easy to do with our fragmented land ownership as a result of the land reform program.

On everything else in Sec Dar’s agenda, it is just a matter of a proper budget and good implementation. But believe it or not, the agriculture budget had been cut for next year. They should cut the budget of Congress instead.

The Agriculture Secretary looks and sounds competent. Under his leadership, agriculture was the only major economic sector that was not in negative territory for the first half of this year.

Dar is a welcome change. He knows agriculture and has a reputation for honesty. In the past, the corruption in the department shortchanged the taxpayers and the farmers. Remember the fertilizer scams during the Arroyo era?

But Sec Dar is also up against institutional and philosophical constraints. Land reform, for instance, despite its failure for decades, is sacred for many policy makers in and out of government.

The political nature of rice will always be a problem for any agriculture secretary. The reform measures we started to implement last year is consistently under fire from various sectors affected by the policy change.

While it is still too early to judge success or failure of the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), some farmers groups are insisting it has not lived to expectations.

The Federation of Free Farmers, for instance, say “the clear winners from RTL were the importers, wholesalers, and retailers.

“The gap between wholesale and retail prices ballooned in the first year of RTL and traders kept most of the gains from cheaper imports for themselves and earned P43.3 billion in windfall profits. Aside from undervaluing their imports and depriving the government of up to P2.5 billion in tariff revenues, importers earned gross profits of P14.2 billion, bringing combined gains to P57.5 billion.

“Farmers must be assisted more effectively and protected from severe drops in farmgate prices. Government should be more forceful in preventing the undervaluation of imports and profiteering by traders so that consumers actually benefit.”

Sec Dar, however, explained that “government provided rice farmers, consumers P100 billion in assistance, savings: assistance to rice farmers estimated at P34 billion, and P72 billion worth of savings for consumers due to lower rice retail prices.”

Dar said since August 2019, assistance to rice farmers was aimed at increasing their farm productivity and income and included free seeds and fertilizers, farm machinery, credit assistance, and training under the P10 billion Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) among others.

Dar said the amount is equivalent to 46 percent of the department’s approved budget in 2020 of P64.7B.

“This alone indicates the importance and priority given to rice farmers, and this is just for the first year of RTL alone, we are striving for a bigger allocation for the rice sector in 2021.

“The entry of imported rice has also resulted in the reduction of consumer prices for regular milled rice, from a high of P45 per kilo (kg) to P37/kg, or a savings of P8/kg.

“Thus, this is equivalent to P72 billion in savings gained by ordinary consumers, enabling them to buy other basic food commodities and necessities.

“At the same time, the country also saw a decline in inflation rate from six percent to two percent, as rice is one of the major components in the consumer basket.”

Dar insisted “the positives in the implementation of RTL far outweigh the negatives.”

In Dar’s last stint at the DA under Erap, agriculture posted nine percent growth, a record that has not been duplicated. We are in good hands.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco