Food security: Listening and understanding
For tonight’s special presentation on Straight from the Sky, we are blessed with a special interview with one of our living heroes in our fight for good governance and corruption. We did not expect this interview to be taped at all, but God’s will brought me to the book launching of the book “Luid Ka!” by the Kapampagan Marangal, Inc. (KMI) and Dilaab Foundation who brought to Cebu the priest-turned-politician Gov. Ed “Amo” Panlilio who will give us the great story that needs to be told about the evils of today’s political system of patronage and how the people of Pampanga responded to the call of responsible citizenship.
With Gov. Panlilo are his support team, Banjo C. Serrano and Averell Lanquindanum, officers of the KMI, who will tell us why they asked Fr. Amo Panlilio to ran against the political power of the jueteng lords and won the day for the people of Pampanga. This is one show that I can say that it truly came “straight from the sky” because I never even thought of having this great man on our show. We are truly blessed and we thank Fr. Carmelo Diola of Dilaab Foundation for the opportunity to have Gov. Ed Panlilio as our special guest tonight. We also thank the University of the Philippines (UP) for allowing us to do this impromptu interview at their conference hall. So watch this one-of-a-kind interview on SkyCable’s channel 15 at
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Last Friday afternoon, we attended the Understanding Choices Forum sponsored by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation (RAFI) at the Eduardo Aboitiz Development Studies Center (EADSC) on perhaps one of the most pressing issues of our time… food security! The title of the Forum was, “Rice Today, Gone Tomorrow? How We Can Attain Food Security?” The plenary hall was jam-packed with a cross section of society. It was so important than even Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who by the way is a graduate of agriculture, attended the forum.
The battery of speakers included Assistant Secretary Salvador Salacup of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Dr. William Padolina (formerly Secretary of the Department of Science & Technology), deputy director general for Operations & Support Services of the International Rice Research Institute, Dr. Grace Alfafara Rodriquez, regional operations officer of the National Food Authority (NFA-7), Dr. Eliseo R. Ponce and Dr. Buenaventura R. Dargantes, both of the Visayas State University (VSU), and Ms. Selsa J. Bernales of the Retailers Association (GRECON).
The resource persons were assistant regional director of the Department of Agrarian Reform Elisaem P. Castillo, and Mr. Diosdado Rosales of the National Irrigation Administration in
If this forum happened years ago, perhaps we wouldn’t be having a food crisis today. Don’t get me wrong, we also didn’t find solutions to the food problems we’re facing today. But as the old radio ad once blared, “Listening is the beginning of understanding.” If only people sat down together not to outtalk each other, but listen to one another, perhaps we’ d be living in a better world.
Due to limited space, we cannot put in one column all that has been said in that forum, let me just echo what DA Asst. Sec. Salacup said that the Philippine government is working to ensure that we have food on our table. This is through a program dubbed, “Pagkain sa Bawat Mesa, Trabaho sa Sakahan.” Unfortunately I don’t understand what this Tagalog word Sakahan means. If only we were a federal form of government, this would be translated to a language you and I can understand.
While it is true that Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) has earmarked some P43.7 billion for agricultural productivity, there is still a lot to be done to stop age-old practices that help bring down our productivity. Dr. Padolina jokingly told us that our present rice drying system, which he calls the “Multi-Purpose Solar Dryer” is the most inefficient way to dry palay. By this he meant, our cemented roads or our basketball courts, which have been constructed mostly by congressional financial support.
We’ve seen our congressmen and women give out small Suzuki mini-cabs, yet this is not what our farmers need. We need to have a paradigm shift to mechanize farming and put the carabao only in areas that are difficult to access. What I learned from Mr. Padolina was that Filipino farmers are more productive than Thai farmers. The problem we must lick is our high cost of production. Lower this and we just might achieve our nirvana of food self-sufficiency. If we have more forums like what RAFI gave us, we can truly work together as a community to assure our own food security.
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