In the peace and quiet of my farm where I have been resting for three days now, I have the luxury of time to ponder on why so many government agriculture projects, which may have been well-intentioned, failed miserably wasting billions of precious public funds.
Rice processing complexes gathering cobwebs, decaying farm level grains centres, abandoned trading posts, useless grains driers and farm equipment which have been abandoned dot the farmlands and countryside, testaments to an effort which was either riddled with corruption or poor management.
These thoughts came to my mind as the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries prepares to undertake one of the most ambitious mechanisation program for Philippine Agriculture and Fisheries.
For the fisheries sector, small ice plants and strategically located cold storage facilities will be established in areas where the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources has already distributed fiberglass fishing boats.
From the cold storage facilities, the fish products will either be processed or transported to the market.
For the agriculture sector, especially crops, farmers and farm workers have been receiving machineries and equipment which are intended to improve their productivity and reduce post harvest losses.
This program is quite complicated because it effectively deprives smaller farmers from accessing the equipment and bedevilled by political meddling.
Besides, the government’s “lowest bidder” procurement process often results in the acquisition of equipment and machineries of very poor quality.
Honestly, I do not believe that the “Equipment and Machineries Grants Program” is sustainable. It is, in fact, vulnerable to corruption and political meddling.
Before I went on a week-long farm rest, I asked the Executive Director of the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC), Jocelyn Badiola, and the head of the Central Agriculture and Fisheries Engineering Division to design a Machineries and Farm Equipment Loans Program which would allow farmers and farm workers access to funds so they could buy the equipment and machineries that they need.
The loans could be as huge as P20-M in the case of sugarcane workers of Negros Occidental, the Tiempo Muerto group, so they could buy tractors, cane harvesters and trucks which they could use in providing services to the farms of their former “masters.”
The loan will be collateralised by the machineries and equipment that they will acquire and a 2% interest per year which will go to the local bank which would serve as the conduit and manager of the loan package.
This program is not only expected to emancipate the lowly and poor farm worker to the level of an agricultural entrepreneur but is also expected to improve farm productivity.
As I look at the program profoundly, however, I see major challenges and in the case of the Negros Sugar Farm Workers (NSFW) organisation, a group of militant cane workers, these include:
1. Technical and skills training on how to operate, maintain and repair their equipment. The Department already has a program called “Makinadong Magsasaka” which we implement with the help of TESDA;
2. Managerial and operational capability to handle P20-M worth of equipment and machineries and ensure that these are utilised effectively so that the loan could be repaid;
3. Financial Management capability to ensure that the earnings of the equipment are properly accounted, deposited and the loans are amortised every cropping season.
Training them to operate, maintain and repair the equipment will not be very hard but to expect the sugarcane farm workers, derisively called “Sacadas” in the past, to manage the deployment and utilisation of the machineries and equipment and the finances would be dreaming of the moon because most of these workers barely finished high school.
This is what scares me. Many government initiatives in the past failed because these concerns were overlooked or ignored.
This is why I am posting my thoughts on this undertaking hoping that there would be well-meaning people, especially young agriculture engineering and finance graduates, who would step forward and help us.
I challenge those who love to march on EDSA to cry for Change. Here is your opportunity to effect change.
In Negros Occidental, which would be the pilot area for the implementation of this program, I am hoping that highly educated and idealistic youths would form themselves into a management group to ensure that this ambitious experiment will succeed.
I do not like to fail. I cannot fail my President, Rody Duterte, and the Filipino people who see him as their hope.
Besides, our people have seen so many failures in the past.
There is no room for another failed experiment under President Duterte.
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