By Manny Piñol
President Rody Duterte Monday night quashed all misgivings on the fate of Agriculture under his administration when he declared that the Philippines will always be an agricultural country and that he will go all out in supporting the country’s farmers.
The President made the statement in Buluan, Maguindanao where the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) distributed land titles to over 7,000 Christian and Moro farmers from the different provinces of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
I attended the event because the Department of Agriculture (DA) has entered into a formal partnership with the DAR by providing support services like roads, irrigation, machinery and credit to agrarian reform beneficiaries.
“We do not have oil like our neighbours. What we have is our land so we will always be an Agricultural country,” he said.
The statement admittedly gave me great relief and lifted my sagging spirits after over two years of seeming indifference by our key planners and policy makers on Agriculture.
The Presidential declaration once and for all clears up the fate of Agriculture and Fisheries under this Administration resulting from statements like “Agriculture is not our priority” and the lean towards dependence on importation.
In 2018, Agriculture and Fisheries received a budget equivalent to less than 2% of the Annual General Appropriations.
Key Agricultural proposals like the Rice Road Map submitted as early as 2016, Small and Sustainable Irrigation Projects and the program to complete the Farm to Market Road Networks either received a paltry budget or none at all.
During a Congressional hearing last year, I was asked by members of the Appropriations Committee to respond to a statement made by a fellow Cabinet Secretary saying that Agriculture is not the priority of the Administration.
I refused to respond to the statement saying that it would not look good for us members of the Cabinet to be engaged in a public debate over a policy which only the President has the right to determine.
Having been born to hardships and poverty where there was never enough of anything, I have learned to be patient and just make do with whatever budget was given to the Department of Agriculture.
But I have to admit that I suffered in silence and there were times when I asked myself whether the hard work and the sacrifices that I and other officials of the Department did were worth anything.
Now, it is clear. I feel so relieved.
We still have over three years left and there is a lot of things which we could now do given the clear statement from the President that Agriculture is the way to go in this country.
(Photo of President Duterte delivering his speech in Buluan, Maguindanao yesterday was taken by Jeofrey Maitem of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Photo of the green fields of Llanera, Nueva Ecija was taken from a helicopter by Angel Laurilla.)
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