Importation is a lazy solution to the issue of food shortage, senatorial candidate Herbert Bautista said on Tuesday, February 8.

Bautista, a former Quezon City mayor, pointed this out as he expressed disappointment over the Department of Agriculture's (DA) decision to greenlight the importation of 60,000 metric tons of fish supposedly in anticipation of a supply shortage in the first quarter of 2022.

According to the senatorial bet, the DA's plan "doesn't make sense" since local producers are not having issues with productivity.

Bautista said farmers should instead be empowered to supply directly to consumers without the participation of supply-chain middlemen.

He said the supply shortage in agricultural and food produce in the country is not a matter of producing or harvesting enough but is instead, an issue of farmers with small landholdings struggling with supply-chain and delivering the products to customers.

As such, he said these middlemen or financiers, who take advantage of small farmers, should be removed from the agriculture supply-chain in order to address shortage issues.

“They’re the same ones who profit hugely from importation,” Bautista said in a statement.

To replace supply-chain middlemen, Bautista suggested pooling the produce of farmers and, through the intervention of trustworthy non-government organizations (NGO’s), delivering these products straight to consumers.

“This way we can assure fair market value for the farmers’ produce and fair costing for the consumers without the profit-taking of middlemen,” explained Bautista, who is running for a Senate seat in the upcoming May 2022 elections.

“There’s a lot of inventory of farm produce out there that isn’t being captured on the radar of the DA. Importation is a very lazy way of dealing with supply issues. It is very destructive, too,” he added.