Food security agenda UNDERSTANDING DUTERTE’S ‘AVAILABLE, AFFORDABLE FOOD’

By Manny Piñol

Early today, as I was preparing to take the 5-hour trip from Surigao City to Cagayan de Oro, I read a two-day old article written by former undersecretary of agriculture Ernesto Ordoñez.

I know Ernie Ordoñez personally although we did not really have a chance to work very closely. He is an upright and well-meaning government official.

His article which talked about the “Proposed Action Plans for Agriculture” for the country’s presidential candidates which came out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, however, did not quite sit well with me, an agriculture advocate and a farmer.

Ernie described Rody Duterte’s agriculture plan of action as “building infrastructure” to ensure the delivery of products to the market.

He got it all wrong and I wrote a comment which I am sharing with you here in this page. (Link to Ernesto Ordonez article: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/…/proposed-action-plans…)

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ernie ordoñez did not even quote rody duterte correctly when he said that his agriculture advocacy seeks to “Build infrastructure to facilitate transport of produce to markets.”

that’s a very shallow and simplistic understanding of a profound plan to feed the filipino people and to create a national economy founded on the country’s available resources and manpower.

duterte’s food security advocacy “available and affordable food” transcends just building infrastructure.

it seeks to reformat the philippine food security strategy by going back to the basics of first quantifying the food requirements of the country and then identifying which areas could best produce which products.

that is when the three requirements of productivity need to be extended by government – technology, financing and marketing. we can go on and on talking about what ails philippine agriculture but for as long as these three important components TECHNOLOGY, FINANCING AND MARKETING are absent, philippine food production efforts will go nowhere.

duterte believes that every filipino family with access to land and water resources (or even those living in urban areas by using modern agriculture technology like green house food production) should be involved in a national effort to produce food – first for their own tables and the excess, for the market.

this is what duterte calls the family-based food production program. and this involves not just agriculture but fisheries as well, another neglected sector in the food production effort.

duterte’s food security advocacy (agriculture and fisheries) goes beyond the worn-out slogans of building infrastructure or providing financing. it is “available and affordable food” for the filipinos.

if some of so-called leaders of philippine agriculture could not understand the profound meaning of this advocacy, then that would explain why until today, the philippines has not achieved sufficiency in food.

we have to stop analyzing what ails philippine food production programs from the point of view of government bureaucrats. let us come up with practical solutions to the problem using the experience and perspective of the filipino farmers.

(Photo of a Filipino family eating downloaded from newsflash.org)