DOMINGO “Ding” Panganiban was barely in his 30s when he received a Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) of the Philippines award in 1969, in a time when that prize was actually awarded to truly overachieving young men younger than 40. Panganiban then was a young, gung-ho official of the Bureau of Plant Industry who worked hand-in-hand with Tarlac’s then-governor Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. to control the rat plague then wiping the province’s rice farms and spreading to nearby rice-producing areas. Aquino, who earned the moniker “Wonder Boy of Philippine Politics” from his Tarlac base, needs no introduction.
It is worth pointing out that Panganiban did not achieve that feat by sitting in his office and issuing press releases and media updates. He was in the paddies, literally muddying his boots and leading his troops, as any responsible field officer in the midst of an important mission would do. From that impressive fieldwork in the general area of what is now known as Central Luzon, Panganiban would swiftly rise from the ranks. He was later named the Ministry of Agriculture’s deputy minister for operations by then-president Ferdinand Marcos Sr. Panganiban was also a short-lived agriculture department caretaker under Marcos’ son and namesake.
Coming from a long line of small farmers and from a region that often experienced pest infestations, I know this very well. The trust vested by Central Luzon farmers on the legendary pest-fighting prowess of the government agricultural workers then was for real, almost reverential.
Panganiban’s feat that led him to the TOYM award probably generated countless magazine covers, and we all know that in those times, newsmagazines were widely read and also influenced the decision-making process.
Take note: I am talking in the past tense.
Today, the forgettable and lamentable regime of Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. is literally the season of widespread agricultural pestilence, with the legendary prowess of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in dealing with agri-centric pests and pandemics long gone, and with press-release factories heralding phony prowess as the pathetic replacement for real work.
The 11 countries battered by the African swine fever (ASF) in 2019, with China as the epicenter, along with some countries once under the former Soviet Union, have placed the ASF under full control. The recovery from the infestation is such that multistory hog farms are now rising in the hog-producing strongholds of China, using the most modern, fully automated swine-raising technologies.
The second wave hit Philippine hog farms, devastating those in major hog-producing regions Southern Tagalog, Central Luzon and Northern Mindanao. And the difference with the China experience is this: the ASF in the Philippines is yet to be fully placed under control. There is still tentativeness on the part of hog growers in the three regions because of the fear that a recurrence would be so financially fatal that they would not recover from a second blow. The promised mass vaccination never came about. At least four regions in the country still report ASF infestations.
The most recent news about the ASF is almost heartbreaking, and it is not even about mainstream hog farms. It is about ASF threatening to wipe out the already endangered Visayan warty pigs and its first cousin, the Philippine warty pig.
That news came not from the government, but from the nonprofit group World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH). WOAH confirmed ASF-caused warty pig deaths in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental, and said the Negros-Panay Faunal Region was mostly where the warty pigs were being ravaged by the hog disease. The deaths of over 100 warty pigs, also blamed on the ASF, also occurred in a forest reserve in Tagum City.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature said that, unless steps were taken to control the infestation in the remaining warty pig population, its extinction due to the ASF is a possibility.
Negros Occidental is also the epicenter of another infestation: the RSSI, or red-striped soft scale insect, which is hitting the province’s sugar farms hard. As of late June 2025, more than 2,000 hectares of sugar farms have been attacked by the insect, which stunts the ability of standing cane to generate the most important thing: sugar. So far, the RSSI pest has been confined to the Negros-Panay area. The fear of sugar industry leaders is its possible spread to sugar farms in Northern Mindanao.
The scenario of “sagging banana exports” was a play of words by agricultural journalists in the late 1970s who wanted to spice things up a bit while also fully realizing that the banana subsector was as stable as stable can be. That doomsday scenario, tragically, is the reality now.
Fusarium wilt, also known as the “Panama disease,” has been hitting hard banana plantations in banana-producing areas in Davao. Production of Cavendish bananas — the kind shipped overseas — dropped by almost 3 percent last year due to the infestation. For years, we were the world’s second top banana exporter. We dropped to third biggest a couple of years ago. Now, we are down to fourth.
All these infestations and agricultural pestilence have been lingering maladies of the sector. But with malingering officials, led by the clueless Tiu Laurel, in charge of putting these under control, phantom remedies are offered instead of the real cure.