EDITORIAL - Food logistics action agenda

The objectives are commendable: to ensure the availability of affordable food, reduce transport costs and plug gaps in the supply chain. The three-year food logistics action agenda, according to Malacañang, seeks to “revolutionize” the country’s food distribution system.

Other blueprints for food security have been drawn up in the past, and several administrations have promised to expand cold chain and logistics facilities nationwide. The outcomes have been unimpressive. The public can only hope the action agenda of the current administration will be able to attain its objectives.

President Marcos has said he wants to turn the country into a logistics hub in Asia. The action agenda, drawn up by the Department of Trade and Industry, was approved during a sectoral meeting on Aug. 29 at Malacañang. Apart from cutting transport and logistics costs, it aims to increase investments in logistics infrastructure, transportation and storage.

It also aims to intensify enforcement measures against agricultural smuggling and hoarding, to include tighter monitoring of cold storage facilities and warehouses. The use of information and communications technology will be heightened to enhance logistics. Food terminals will be upgraded and more will be built. These will be integrated into the logistics framework. According to the Presidential Communications Office, the food hubs “will serve as command centers for effectively supervising the balance between demand and supply.”

The action agenda is in line with directives issued in September last year by President Marcos, who is concurrently secretary of agriculture, for the development of a food logistics chain and expansion of the cold chain industry, ports infrastructure and farm-to-market roads.

Much of the problems that dominated the first year of the current administration involved agricultural products and food security. Onion prices surged to sky-high levels due to messy import policies. Despite harvests and tons of imports since late last year, sugar prices remain so high that institutional users sought permission to directly import the commodity from other countries where prices are much lower.

These days, rice prices have jumped, putting the election campaign “aspiration” for P20 a kilo rice even farther out of reach. Addressing supply chain weaknesses and cracking down on smuggling and hoarding can improve the food situation. The government must ensure that nothing will get lost between the declaration of objectives in the food logistics agenda and the measures for their attainment.