Presidentiables told to adopt agri agenda

MANILA, Philippines - The Butil Party today challenged the country’s presidential candidates to adopt a strong agricultural agenda focused on five specific areas with the twin objectives of producing enough food for domestic needs and helping in the international efforts to ease a looming global food crisis of epic proportion .

The Butil, the country’s largest peasant-based political party, made the challenge in an open letter to the country’s presidential candidates, an open letter that stated the urgency of producing enough food in a domestic context of massive poverty  and rising farm imports, and the fear of a crippling food shortage on the global front.

The agricultural agenda of five, doable programs, once put in place, would provide the “ideal policy environment” for spurring agricultural productivity, according to Butil Representatives Leonila V. Chavez and Agapito Guanlao. These are:

1. A vigorous research and development program (R and D) for quality genetics in crops, poultry, livestock, aquaculture and fisheries

2. Adequate post-harvest facilities, which inadequacy was exposed in the post-Ondoy and post-Pepeng efforts to save what could be saved from the flooded farming areas

3. Adequate farm irrigation but via new technologies and small-scale water systems that are cheap to build and cheaper to maintain. We should wean the country’s irrigation policy away from the costly, dangerous and environment-threatening multi-purpose dams

4. The full implementation of the Agri-Agra Law, which requires banks to allocate 25 per cent of their yearly loan portfolio to small farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries.

5. The return of the cadres of farm extension workers that made the Green Revolution program of the late Executive Secretary Rafael Salas a great success.

Chavez and Guanlao said that the “five are basic programs that would not drain the national treasury. “But properly implemented, the five basic programs can lead to attaining national food security within the medium term, a development that would help ease global jitters about a looming food shortage.

The execution of the five programs would empower the farmers. “With good programs in place, farmers can very well take care of themselves. What they need is an ideal policy environment, not much else and no dole-outs,” Chavez and Guanlao said.

The open letter to the presidential candidates said that just because the country’s farmers cannot flex a political muscle that is approximate to their sheer voting numbers, the candidates can ignore the pressing demand to adopt a vigorous agricultural agenda.

“Boosting agricultural production is the predicate to fulfilling many grand national objectives, whether this is reversing the grim figures of poverty or putting in place the strong foundations for lasting peace,” the open letter said.

The open letter stated that “much of the nation’s vexing problems such as unconscionable poverty and insurgency are deeply rooted in the rural areas, in the marginal farms where the norm is struggling for basic survival.”

On the international front, the open letter cited the massive and frantic efforts of the World Bank and the United Nations to direct investment and technical assistance into agriculture.

“The UN and the WB are not doing this as a matter of routine advocacy. There is a realization that seeking global peace or raising living standards across the globe will not gain traction unless people have something to eat. Hungry stomachs can neither read nor internalize the loftiest treatises on development,” Chavez and Guanlao said.

The open letter cited the food shortage of 2007 and how this had horrifically unhinged the world despite the briefness of the crisis.

“And, looming on the horizon, is another food crisis of epic proportion,” the open letter said.