Can President Marcos revive PHL agriculture?

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations publishes an annual report known as the State of Food Security and Nutrition within the World. The most up-to-date addition from 2021 reported that the worldwide prevalence of average and extreme meals insecurity has been slowly growing. The alarming information, in line with FAO, is that the rise in 2020 was equal to the earlier 5 years all added up. Before the pandemic, the UN estimate for the variety of folks affected by extreme meals insecurity was 135 million. Today, that quantity swelled to 276 million.

As the world faces skyrocketing meals costs, poor and growing nations endure essentially the most. The International Food Policy Research Institute, a non-profit group that focuses on ending starvation and poverty, mentioned the long-term reduction from rising meals costs can solely be doable with elevated agricultural manufacturing.

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., as concurrent agriculture chief, is true on observe when he issued his first marching order to the Department of Agriculture to make sure the nation’s meals provide for the remainder of the yr, particularly for rice, corn and even pork and hen meat. “We have to attend to the impending food crisis that it seems will be visiting us in the next two quarters. When we look around the world, everyone is preparing for it,” Marcos instructed high-ranking agriculture officers at an govt committee assembly on Tuesday on the Bureau of Soils and Water Management (Read, “Marcos as agriculture chief: Food supply, prices first priority,” within the BusinessMirror, July 5, 2022).

Marcos added: “We are already in a disadvantageous position in terms of food supply. We should really pay very close attention to what we can do. I think the conclusion we have come to here is that we have to increase production.”

The President reminded the agriculture officers that on prime of creating meals provide ample is making certain that they might be inexpensive to the Filipino shoppers. “We have to think very hard about making sure that people have the same sufficient food. And number one, at a price that they can afford. Because, again, it is useless to have food if you cannot afford it.”

Here’s one strategy to shortly enhance manufacturing and decrease costs of farm merchandise: Provide small-scale farmers with improved seeds, fertilizer, credit score and different assets they want. There’s no higher time for the DA to convey extension and advisory companies, and different improvements to our farmers.

To assist strengthen the federal government’s meals sufficiency program in the long term, an official of the Department of Education in Antique is in search of President Marcos’s help to strengthen the farm faculty within the province and different components of the nation, as these farm colleges function good coaching grounds for the brand new breed of Filipino farmers.

DepEd-Antique Superintendent Felisa Beriong, in extending her congratulations to the President, mentioned she was elated to know that meals sufficiency is a precedence of the brand new administration. “With Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio as our DepEd Secretary and President Marcos heading DA, we could really look forward to more support to our farm schools,” Beriong mentioned.

Antique has a farm faculty in Barangay Aningalan, San Remigio however there are plans to additionally open farm colleges in different municipalities. Learners, principally kids of farmers within the upland barangays, are being taught how one can domesticate rice and different crops, in addition to entrepreneurship to show them how one can market their merchandise.

The Philippine Statistics Authority mentioned 23 % of the nation’s staff are energetic within the agriculture sector. Those employed in agriculture comprised of seven.46 million males and a couple of.24 million females in 2019. Unfortunately, most Filipino farmers don’t want farming for his or her kids, in line with a examine printed within the Philippine Journal of Science. Among the interviewed farmers, 73 % of them believed that their kids wouldn’t have a future in the event that they turn into rice farmers like them. The farmers generally identified how rice farming is “physically tiring and not economically rewarding.”

Pundits mentioned weak authorities insurance policies and applications, the nation’s extreme reliance on agricultural imports and widespread corruption have taken their toll on the agriculture sector.

During the administration of the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos, the Philippines attained rice self-sufficiency in 1975–1976, and the nation exported rice to neighboring Asian nations in 1977–1978 when farmers below the Masagana 99 program produced a surplus of some 89,000 metric tons.

Can the President duplicate what his father has finished?