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By Ira Karen Apanay and Angelo S.
Samonte Reporters
President Gloria Arroyo assured
the country’s agricultural sector of 99-percent support from the
government.
She showed such apparent concern
by announcing that she was allocating a total of P39.5 billion to
help rice farmers in particular to raise agricultural production.
President Arroyo also announced
that she will appoint a Deputy Ombudsman for Agriculture, whose job
is to ensure that funds allocated to the sector would not be wasted
on corruption.
The announcements highlighted the
one-day National Food Summit that the government convened on Friday
with top officials and farm experts to help the country cope with
soaring rice prices, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said.
Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas 2nd
said the food summit resulted from “an adrenaline rush among
executives to come up with abrupt measures.” He added that the
summit should have been convened long before the Agriculture
department admonished Filipinos to start eating brown rice or
half-a-cup of rice.
Roxas suggested that a 10-year
food security plan be adopted instead, in consultation with experts
and stakeholders. “Otherwise, we will continue to muddle our way
through a global regime of soaring food prices,” he said.
Addressing unchecked population
growth will also help the government tackle the apparently looming
rice crisis, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said.
He proposed that the government
also adopt a three-pronged program on “moderating population
growth rate, preventing the conversion of irrigated and irrigable
farm lands to non-agricultural uses, and empowering the farmer to
become a rice producer rather than just a palay grower.”
Lagman said the annual population
growth rate of 2.34 percent outpaces the average yearly rice
production growth rate of 1.9 percent.
Yap said the food summit was
aimed at “unifying our initiatives to guarantee food security,”
as soaring prices have caused countries around Asia to look urgently
at the problem.
The Philippines, a major rice
importer, has been one of the countries hardest hit by the increase
in rice prices, which are near record highs—leading some experts
to warn Asian governments that they could face domestic unrest.
President’s pledge
During her speech at the summit
held in Pampanga, north of Manila, the President said the government
will use “every resource that we have to feed every Filipino in
the country.”
“I listen intently to your
recommendations and all of them are doable—99 percent are still
doable,” the President told delegates to the summit.
The P39.5 billion will fund
“FIELDS”—fertilizer, irrigation and infrastructure, special
education, loans, dryers, and seeds.
For fertilizer, the Agriculture
department was instructed to spend P500 million for organic
fertilizer from the budget of the Agricultural Competitiveness
Enhancement Fund.
Annually, Mrs. Arroyo allocates
P6 billion for irrigation and P6 billion for infrastructure.
She asked the Department of
Science and Technology to allocate P2 billion for research and
development for special education for students in state colleges and
universities. The President said P1 billion is for capability
training and the other billion is for agriculture educational
training.
For loans, a total of P15 billion
in agricultural loans has been allotted for farmers. This allotment
will come from Landbank of the Philippines.
Before the President spoke to the
delegates, Bobby Amores of PhilFoodEx had proposed that Congress
pass a bill allowing farmlands as collateral for farm loans so that
farmers can use the money for additional investment. Mrs. Arroyo
shortly asked House Speaker Prospero Nograles, who was at the
summit, to look into Amores’ proposal.
The farmer-delegates from Luzon
and Mindanao thanked Mrs. Arroyo and the Agriculture department for
the flatbed dryers that the government has given out to farmers.
During the National Food Summit, the President gave out an
additional P2 billion for purchase of flatbed dryers for other
producers of rice and corn in other parts of the country.
She also allocated a total of P8
billion for seed subsidy from 2008 to 2010.
Mrs. Arroyo said P2 billion is
for hybrid seeds and P6 billion is for certified seeds.
Summit successful
Yap considered the summit as a
big success after the critical problem of the department with the
National Seed Program was answered with the P8-billion allocation.
“Now, we are sure that we have
seed support until 2010, this is a big relief,” he said.
Yap, who presented the
agriculture report to the President, assured that there will be
enough rice supply until the first quarter of 2009 despite a
supposedly impending food crisis outside the country.
The government has announced
plans to import 1.5 million tons of the staple cereal this year, of
which 700,000 tons are expected to arrive in July. Yap said the
government has the capacity to import “up to 2.7 million tons”
this year, but did not say if that figure will be reached.
The Philippines has become too
dependent on food importation to make up for its shortfalls in
domestic production and should reverse this trend, the think-tank
IBON Foundation said.
Importation should only be a
short-term solution to supply shortages, IBON Executive Editor
Rosario Bella Guzman said in a statement.
“Although it is a good sign
that the National Food Authority has raised buying price of palay [unhusked
rice] to P17 per kilogram from P12, it should ensure that traders do
not translate this to higher prices of commercial rice,” Guzman
added.
The government, she said, should
also allocate more funds for buying from local farmers. If the P5
billion announced by the President were used, Guzman added, it would
only buy some 300,000 metric tons, or less than 1 percent of the
expected production this year of 7.2 million metric tons of palay.
Members of the House of
Representatives, mayors and governors, sectoral representatives,
rice and corn farmers, non-government organizations, and
civil-society groups took part in the National Food Summit.
Agri ombudsman
In announcing her plan to appoint
a Deputy Ombudsman for Agriculture, Mrs. Arroyo said the law
empowers her to name one.
“We must be transparent, we
must work to fix the corruption including in the agri-business
sector. We will prohibit officials from dealing with fertilizer
brokers,” the President said. “Friends and foes alike are [to
be] brought to account for their actions.”
Mrs. Arroyo said the Agriculture
department, National Food Authority, and National Bureau of
Investigation will monitor rice deliveries and investigate hoarding,
price manipulation, and other illegal activities.
The food authority, she added,
will cancel licenses of rice dealers who were found to have violated
the terms and conditions of their accreditation.
Mrs. Arroyo said she also has the
power to appoint a Deputy Ombudsman, citing a case in 1990 when then
President Corazon Aquino named a Deputy Ombudsman for the Military.
“Considering that agriculture
spending is now bigger than defense spending, a Deputy Ombudsman may
be needed for agriculture,” she said.
The Philippine military was
called in on Thursday to help deliver rice to poor neighborhoods in
the capital Manila.
--With Sammy Martin and AFP
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