Food

Having dispatched his pesky Vice President (you know her) and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary BenHur Abalos and the Philippine National Police having executed the stunning arrest of two of the country’s most notorious fugitives, Alice Guo (who former PNP chief Panfilo Lacson says is a non-Filipino and a Chinese spy) and pastor Apollo Quiboloy (the son of god, of course), President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. is back focusing on this old love – agriculture.

Agriculture is producing food to feed the hungry. There are 15 million hungry Filipinos in my estimate. The number of malnourished children is more than seven million. Every day, 95 of our kids, or nearly 35,000 a year, die due to malnutrition. That’s genocide.

Yesterday, Sept. 11, was the 107th birth anniversary of the late Ferdinand Edralin Marcos Sr. (the Father of the Green Revolution). Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. flew by helicopter to Subic to catch smugglers (of onions, carrots and tobacco). On Friday, Sept. 13, BBM’s 67th birthday, the President flies to Guimba, Nueva Ecija with Tiu Laurel to meet with farmers.

On Tuesday, the Manila Overseas Press Club has a luncheon (11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.) forum with Agriculture Secretary Tiu Laurel at the Fairmont Hotel ballroom. Major conglomerates and senior newsmen have booked tables to hear the DA chief elaborate on his Agriculture Road Map and why agriculture is a good bet to invest in. An open forum follows his presentation/speech.

“Our economy continues to grow,” gloats Sec Kiko. However, he hastens to add, “Agriculture is not growing as fast as the entire economy. We are going down and down.” Agriculture’s share of the economy (or its share of the Gross Domestic Product or GDP), has been falling, from 10.4 percent in 2016 to 8.6 percent in 2023, its lowest ever.

That 1.8-percentage loss (10.4 less 8.6) is equivalent to P500 billion a year in lost production or to three years of $3 billion per year worth of rice imports. Our agricultural trade deficit (the amount of food we export minus the food we import) is scandalously high, P1.14 trillion – enough money to irrigate all the non-irrigated farm lands and solve, almost overnight, our severe rice shortage. Irrigation doubles or triples average palay yield per hectare of 3.8 tons. If agriculture had kept its share of GDP of 10 percent, we would not be needing rice imports, food prices would not go through the roof, inflation would not rage and interest rates would not have tripled in less than three years.

Among government’s breathtaking panoply of choices amid economic challenges, high interest rates are the favorite panacea of the Bangko Sentral to control inflation. That cure-all has failed. Dismally.

Filipinos continue to suffer from high prices and high interest rates. And every year, in the past two years, two million more Filipinos joined the ranks of the poor. The bottom 30 percent of Filipinos suffer from inflation (or the rapid rise in prices) more than the upper 70 percent.

In August 2024, the average inflation rate for all Filipinos was just 3.3 percent. For the same period, the inflation rate for the bottom 30 percent was 4.7 percent, 42 percent higher than the national average. In regimes of high food prices, high inflation rates and high interest rates, the poor suffer the most – and devastatingly.

What happens when people don’t have enough to eat? They become stupid.

No food translates into no brain growth. When you produce masses with little or barren brains, you produce masses of stupid voters. And stupid voters, in turn, elect in high volume, officials like that brat who claims she is THE designated survivor (of what, famine?) and that farm girl who does not even know her real name (Guo Hua Ping) but managed to get herself elected a small town mayor and become a big time POGO operator.

And since dynastic families are well endowed (economically), are well fed and well-nourished, you get a Congress 70 percent of whose members are dynasts.

What about the BSP? Well, the BSP people are the best educated and the best paid of our civil servants. They are not stupid. They are brilliant.

But sometimes, they eat the wrong kind of food and end up doing stupid things. Like printing a plastic ID every Filipino must have, but without a signature. Yet, BSP itself mandates banks to demand of their clients and depositors two IDs, both of which must have a valid signature. You cannot do business with a bank without a signature. You cannot withdraw your money without a signature. In fact, the bank teller won’t recognize you as a human being if you don’t have a signature. But a national ID? Well, no signature needed.

No wonder during the Sept. 9 hearing of the Senate committee on women, ex-mayor Guo was shown her signature produced by the NBI and she refused to acknowledge it. In local politics and in businesses like POGO, no signatures are needed. That may perhaps explain the BSP’s no-signature-is-necessary IDs.

In the administration’s P6.352-trillion proposed national budget, the top three priority expenditure items are: 1) infrastructure development (P900 billion in public works, P181 billion in transportation); 2) human capital development (P977.6 billion for education and training) and 3) sustainable agriculture and food security (P211.3 billion for DA and its attached agencies). Sec Kiko wanted a P500-billion DA budget but was given less than half by the budget department.

Among countries with a huge population, the Philippines provides among the lowest support to its farmers, per capita, just $2,563. The major rice producing countries provide much more to their farmers, per capita: Vietnam $4,812; Thailand $5,919; India $6,157 and China $13,771.

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]