Dr. Emil Q. Javier
This two-part column had for its premise the observation that what ails our agriculture is not so much the lack of appropriate policies and enabling legislation but more of inadequacy in the nitty-gritty of program planning, implementation and monitoring and feedback (and embarrassingly, graft and corruption).
True that there are a number of outstanding issues which remain unresolved. But it is also true that we already have a surfeit of overarching policies, strategies and enabling legislation to move agriculture forward. The Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA); the Fisheries Code; the Forestry Code; the Agriculture Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (ACEF); the Local Government Code; and the specific laws creating PCA, SRA, NFA, NIA, the Land Bank of the Philippines, as well as the Agri-Agra law requiring all banks to set aside at least 20% of their loan portfolios for agriculture; further support for inclusive financing through rural banks and micro finance institutions (MFIs); Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation (PCIC); the Agricultural Guarantee Fund Pool (AGFP); and the Credit Surety Fund (CSF) — all of these initiatives are very well-meaning in their purposes and comprehensive in their coverage.
For sure they can be improved further but all the essential principles, purposes and strategic directions are there. All that remain to be done is to translate the intents of these policies and laws into well-thought programs, and implement them, and stay the course from one administration to the next.
And even in those concerns where the policy environment is lacking and/or inappropriate, there are practical, interim solutions within the powers of the President and the existing mandates of the implementing agencies to modernize agriculture without waiting for new legislation.
Following are additional illustrations in support of this premise:
Coping with the constraints
of agrarian reform
A key policy reform espoused by our leading economic analysts is to lift the limits to land ownership under agrarian reform to allow for reconsolidation of our small fragmented farms into more viable economic units, and to encourage more private sector investments in agriculture. While we agree with the prescription, its resolution anytime soon is problematic.
This is tantamount to reversing agrarian reform. Only a president with an overwhelming electoral mandate and enduring political base would dare exhaust political capital on this highly divisive and potentially flammable issue. President Rodrigo Duterte, as popular as he is, probably can afford to do so but would not. As PRRD has repeatedly announced, he is genuinely in full support of agrarian reform.
However, there are ways of getting around the politically and culturally sensitive issue of land ownership in order to attain economies of scale. In the first place, AFMA provides for the concentration of primary production in Strategic Agriculture and Fisheries Development Zones (SAFDZs). Secondly, the one-town-one-product (OTOP) approach of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) essentially achieves the same objective of production consolidation by geography.
Another, and proven, approach is by promoting the business model of contract growing. In this scheme groups of small farmers are organized to raise crops, poultry, and livestock, and fish for corporate integrators but with a guaranteed market. In order to assure themselves of the volume, timing and quality of supply, the corporate integrators advance seeds and breeding stock, fertilizers, feeds, and provide agriculture extension and veterinary support to the small producers. Additionally, and very importantly, this mutually beneficial arrangement relieves to a very significant extent the government of the burden of providing affordable credit, subsidized inputs, extension services and market support to small famers.
As proof, agrarian reform has not prevented the large hugely successful corporate banana, pineapple and papaya exporters in Mindanao and domestic tobacco manufacturers in Luzon to enlist farmers to grow for them. Or to lease their farms outright.
The argument that contract growing is only for big farms is not correct. Philip Morris is doing well with thousands of Ilocano tobacco growers each with only a few hundred square meters. That tobacco contract growing only works because of the legendary industry of Ilocano farmers is also not true. Philip Morris is now very active in Bukidnon.
Refocusing of extension planning, coordination, and execution
at the provincial level
The other broad, contentious and unresolved issue in agriculture is the perceived weakening of agricultural extension due to its devolution to the local governments under the Local Government Code. Devolution was in keeping with the spirit of democratic participation and empowerment unleashed by EDSA I.
However, it appears that we went too far. Most towns did not have enough resources to hire and pay extension personnel and provide them with sufficient operating funds to move around. After 30 years, we in the Coalition for Agricultural Modernization in the Philippines (CAMP) together with our colleagues in the five-party Agriculture and Fisheries Alliance led by Ernesto Ordoñez have come around the conclusion that the province (not the municipality) is the more appropriate focus of rural extension planning, coordination, and execution.
This recalibration, however, would require taking away the supervision and control of the municipal agriculture offices (MAOs) from the town mayors and instead placing them under the provincial agricultural offices (PAOs). Thus, the need to amend the Local Government Code accordingly.
This is easier said than done as the town mayors and district congressmen not politically allied with the provincial governor will very likely push back.
But there is an administrative way of achieving the same objective without going through the protracted, bloody and divisive process of legislation. This is through the power of the purse. If the national support from the Department of Agriculture (DA) for augmenting salaries of extension agents, for additional operating expenses and equipment and capital outlay for extension and farmer training facilities were coursed through the PAOs, these should be more than enough incentive for the MAOs to coordinate and work closely with the PAOs.
DA Secretary Manny Piñol has agreed to pilot this alternative administrative arrangement in Ilocos Norte, Eastern Samar and Agusan del Sur. Preliminary agreements have been reached in consultation with the local executives in the three provinces. The Agricultural Training Institute (ATI), the extension lead agency of the DA, will lead the initiative starting this year.
PRRD doing a Boracay for rice
Finally, we are glad President Duterte has finally acceded to rice tariffication. In the long term, that’s the way forward. But the fears of rice farmers that they will be left in the lurch are real. More rice imports will bring down the price of rice and help consumers but rice tariffication by itself, does not address the plight of farmers. The assurances of protective measures to help farmers raise their productivity, competitiveness, and incomes through a Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Funded (RCEF) ring hollow in the light of their sad experience with the original ACEF under AFMA.
It will take PRRD’s direct intervention like in the closure of Boracay, and now the rehabilitation of Manila Bay, to make these protective measures happen. We hope he does!
Dr. Emil Q. Javier is a Member of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and also Chair of the Coalition for Agriculture Modernization in the Philippines (CAMP).
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