"Secretary Dar knows exactly what he is doing."
"Secretary Dar knows exactly what he is doing."
With all the news coming out these days regarding our food security, it is comforting to note that the new man at the helm of the Department of Agriculture knows what he is doing, and what he wants to achieve in the next two years before the 2022 electoral fever convulses the nation.
While others would go into drama, Willy Dar is cool and composed when explaining the problems that now beset our rice farmers with the incipient implementation of RA 11203, otherwise known as the Rice Tariffication Law.
In the aftermath of the yet unknown disease that struck hogs in some parts of Rizal, Sec. Dar warned against prematurely labelling the affliction as the dreaded African Swine Fever, informing the public that independent tests would need to be done by outside experts for utmost impartiality, while quickly imposing the decimation of the hog population in a one-kilometer radius from the disease-stricken area.
One could only hope and pray that when those results on the disease which afflicted our hogs comes out today, they would not spell ASF, or the impact on our livestock production would be incalculable.
Equally comforting is that the National Food Authority, though stripped of most of its regulatory and market intervention powers, is led by a career official and not an outsider. Imagine if the President had appointed another military man who needs months to understand the workings of the rice market at a time like this?
Administrator Judy Dansal started with the staple grains agency at a time when it was helmed by Jesus Tanchanco in the mid-70s, and retired as deputy administrator last year. A lawyer, Dansal has handled several departments of the NFA, from administration to operations including supervising grains industry stakeholders.
Out of retirement, the President has tapped her, in a manner of speaking, to play the taps to NFA’s once-premier role in food security.
How Dar and Dansal would manage the rice situation, where farmers are groaning over the low prices of palay and importers have been given unbridled access to cheap imports, should bear watching. At this stage, it is at least comforting to know that we have experts on top of the situation. We can only wish them the best.
From a medium- and even long-term perspective though, policy makers should come out with a formula where the interest of our palay farmers are not made to clash with the interest of consumers who need affordable rice. Relying on an imperfect market to eventually level the playing field may not work in the Philippine context.
Neither will a P10-billion Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund be enough, especially the way the allocation of such funds have been legislated. A clear example is reserving 50 percent of the Fund for the purchase of agricultural machineries, ostensibly to “modernize” our palay farms. Unless we find a way to make cooperatives work, or create economies of scale among our agrarian reform beneficiaries, program implementation of the 50 percent for mechanization may only create white elephants worsened by corruption.
As it is, there is a long line of agricultural machineries at the parking lots of UP Los Banos awaiting inspection and certification by an agency which has been unable to methodically address its mandate.
Our economic managers and Secretary Dar will also need to look at our moribund coconut industry, with the prices of copra at a historic low. Coconut farmers, probably even more than palay farmers, are among the poorest in our agricultural sector.
The current state of the coconut industry, unless addressed well, would add fodder for the propaganda wiles and recruitment campaign of what ought to be a dying communist insurgency.
Still and all, the two weeks that passed, where national attention was riveted towards a Bureau of Corrections that seems incorrigible to correct, ended with comforting action from President Duterte himself.
After listening to the proceedings in the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee over the release of heinous criminals via the GCTA Law, the President let down the axe on Bucor director Nicanor Faeldon, for although the guy may not have been into a prisoner release racket for profit, the appalling lack of judgment and incompetence was clear for all to see.
Comforting as well was the order for all those prematurely released to surrender to the law within fifteen days, or face arrest, even with extreme prejudice.
The demonstration of political will, as quite often exercised by the President, has had a calming effect on the collective wrath of the nation.
Indeed, incompetence in the exercise of government functions, which is often glossed over as less than actual corruption, may have led to the suffering of the public as much as the wages corruption sucks from them.
To quote Sen. Ping Lacson: “If corruption is counter-productive, inefficiency and incompetence could even be worse.”