Small thoughts on big issues – agriculture and nuclear power

AGRICULTURE and nuclear power are two topics that have been brought up by the incoming president and his team and commentators. I am happy they are doing that as they are important and these issues, which were absent from the campaign, are now being discussed. Wonder why none of the campaigns bothered with weighty issues besides motherhood sloganeering? Duterte rode the drug scourge to successfully differentiate himself. None of the campaigns went beyond major platitudes in my view. Some had some position papers which were more like extended slogans with an explanatory paragraph but nothing worth reading.

Food cost versus food security. I consider this to be a major concern, but don't claim to be knowledgeable on this issue to give specific advice. My observations are that the debate is between lower food prices hence opening the country to more imports of staples versus food security which may mean for some analysts higher food prices but, more importantly, requires proactive policies to enhance production, distribution and processing domestically. I have heard it argued that our country is overpopulated, and farms are so small that we will not be self-sufficient in rice and staples. I find that a stupid argument that concedes the issue rather than works on it. Well, if we have reached Malthusian levels, then we need to reduce at the very least population growth, something I think we are 50 years overdue in doing. Whatever furtive gains we were making in reducing the rate of population growth got reversed by the power the Church has post-1986. I am 63 years old and in my lifetime the population of the country has grown from about 20 million to over 112 million. Most of our neighbors doubled or tripled during that period while we increased over five times. Exponential growth in population has not been a success when comparing growth rates and GDP to our neighbors with their moderate population growth. It has also led to the faulty economic rationale to justify dogma. I would have more respect if they just said it is a matter of faith and dogma rather than foist fallacious economic theories that no successful country subscribes to.