A food security summit is timely in the face of soaring food prices and the still-underdeveloped agriculture sector. It is an occasion to revisit the farm sector that has underperformed in pre-COVID-19 times compared with the rest of the economy.
The summit hopefully will lead to the crafting of an improved National Food Security Plan to make the Philippines more reliant on domestic production and give farmers and fishermen increased income. The plan should make the country’s agriculture sector efficient, competitive with the rest of Asia, and more diversified.
The Philippines, sadly, has not developed a modern agriculture sector. Farmers and fishermen, as well as corporate stakeholders, have not received government support, or a form of subsidy, to make Philippine agriculture competitive. Vietnamese and Thai farmers, in contrast, have obtained state subsidies or incentives that partly explain their farming proficiency and success in aqua-culture. Vietnam and Thailand are now major fish producers and rice exporters in Asia.
Past and present administrations have identified the problems besetting Philippine agriculture. One of the foremost deficiencies of the sector is poor post-harvest facilities. Fishermen, farmers, and poultry raisers quickly dispose of their produce and harvest to traders or middlemen at lower prices to prevent staleness. Post-harvest facilities such as cold storage are not enough to keep their produce fresh.
A national food security plan is a long time coming. Malacañang wants to achieve a “vision of a food-secure and the resilient Philippines with prosperous farmers and fisherfolk, and where consumers have a continuous flow of food and producers have continuous productivity, unhampered movement of agricultural commodities, accessibility and price stability.”
The food security plan should also discourage cartels or syndicates that raise the prices of commodities. The Philippines should freely import agricultural products, especially meat if local producers cannot meet the demand in times of a supply disruption, as in the case of rice, to keep prices low.