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The Agriculture department brightly reports that the sector
grew by 4.68 percent from January to December 2007. The crops
subsector performed well this year, expanding by 5.57 percent.
Livestock and poultry production managed to surpass last year’s
levels. The fisheries subsector grew by 6.81 percent. The gross
value of agricultural production (including fishery) amounted to
P971.8 billion. This is a 9.37 percent increase over the 2006
figures. But it falls short of the government’s 5 percent
2007 growth target for agriculture.
The DA’s glowing report does not give a hint
that in Ilocos Norte a company that provides livelihood for 3,000
farmers and that competes with China in supplying tomato paste to
multinational fast-food restaurants is in danger of closing down.
Northern Foods Corp. (NFC), despite its globally-competitive
marketing success and product-quality excellence, has asked P190
million from the government’s Agricultural Competitiveness
Enhancement Fund (ACEF) to be able to build a new plant. The
present plant is 25 years old. Without a new one, Northern can no
longer compete with importers bringing in low-cost, subsidized and
low-tariff tomato sauce from China.
Northern Foods now impressively supplies tomato
paste to 37 companies, including Jollibee, McDonald’s, KFC, Mister
Donut, Unilever, Del Monte (Philippines), Nestlé Phils. Inc., Heinz
(of UFC Phils. Inc.), San Miguel Foods Corp./Purefoods Poultry,
Purefoods (of Hormel), Hunt’s (of Universal Robina Corp.) and
Monde Nissin.
The company is owned by Livecor and, by virtue
of Executive Order 223, has become an attached agency of the
Department of Agriculture. DA Secretary Yap correctly wants
his department out of the tomato paste business. He wants the
Ilocos Norte provincial government to take over Northern Foods.
Tragic condition
The plight of the Ilocos Norte tomato farmers
yet again dramatizes the tragic condition of the country’s
agriculture and agri-business sectors.
These sectors should contribute the most to the
administration’s goals of ending poverty and unemployment. Instead
—despite the claim that a million new farm-area jobs were created
in 2007—the farm areas are still the sickest and poorest parts of
our political economy.
A strong and progressive countryside is the
sound base for sustained social, economic and political stability.
The USA, Europe and Japan have proved, and now India and China are
proving, that. Even the United Nations describes agriculture as
“the bed rock of the poor.”
Our country should not have suffered massive
agricultural unemployment. There should have been a mushrooming of
agri-business jobs and no need to import hundreds of million dollars
worth of rice these past years—if correct policies and programs
were pursued all these 61 years of our life as an independent
republic and capitalist democracy.
The greater part of our rural areas is where the
poorest and most deprived Filipinos live. These millions of
Filipinos are second only in poverty, joblessness and deprivation of
their God-given human dignity to the millions who are their cousins
and siblings—the slum dwellers and squatters in the metropolitan
areas. The latter are in fact refugees from the absence of
peace, food, employment and the basic necessities in their
provincial villages.
Presidents and their economic and productivity
managers —including their secretaries of agriculture, senators and
congressmen are mainly the ones who have consigned the rural areas
to their unfortunate fate.
We should, in fairness, also blame the Communist
Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army, and the other rebel
and bandit groups, for making thousands of hectares of Philippine
agricultural land places of peril for farmers and agri-business
entrepreneurs. And we should also hold the Philippine National
Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines liable. For it is
their job to rid the country of armed bandits and rebels.
Corrupt officials and, again, law enforcement
officers, who connive with private sector smugglers of farm
products—tomatoes, garlic, onions, chickens and rice—are also
guilty of making our farmers poor. And for killing agri-businesses
and agro-industries.
The agricultural and rural-area policies adopted
by successive administrations, and these administrations’ lack of
will to annihilate corruption, have led to a weak and eroding
agro-industrial structure.
Coherent policies needed
The government’s economic managers now have to
make Philippine trade and agro-industrial policies as coherent as
those for example as our “twin”—Thailand—and our
emerging competitor, Vietnam.
We must realize that the primary purpose of
trade is to strengthen industry and agriculture and create more jobs
in these sectors.
In doing our part to promote global free trade
we must now pursue a trade policy that will not only make the
Philippines a profitable source of OFWs. We should now accept
only terms and conditions in global and bilateral agreements that
will boost our industry and agriculture and create jobs in these
sectors.
We must fight harder to correct the unfair trade
practices of other economies.
We must now consciously enter into discussions
armed with the knowledge that we will support more liberalization
only with specific goals of increasing our exports, nurturing the
rebirth of our industrial base and the repair of our agricultural
base.
The world has become unpredictable.
Because of our poverty and global uncompetitiveness we must continue
maintaining the goodwill of powerful nations and transnationals. We
must, however, design and pursue our own food security plan and
programs—and resist moves from outside that will weaken instead of
repair our agricultural base.
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