Isda sa kabukiran DA, BFAR, PFDA PREPARE PLAN TO SELL FISH IN REMOTE AREAS By Manny Piñol

“Available and Affordable Food for the Filipinos.”

The beauty of this campaign commitment of President Rody Duterte is that it basically defines everything that he wants the Department of Agriculture to do during his 6-year Presidency.

To make “Food Available,” there must be greater production and efficient distribution of food commodities.

To make “Food Affordable,” the cost of production must be brought down and the poverty of the people must be addressed for them to be able to buy the food items they need.

There are food commodities, however, whose availability and affordability are affected by very poor distribution system.

On top of this would be fish.

In many fishing grounds of the country, up to 40% of the fish catch is lost to spoilage simply because there are no cold storage or ice-making facilities.

While ordinary fish like “Tamban” (sardines fish) is sold for as low as P20 to P25 per kilo in many fishing communities, many poor families living in the mountains and interior towns and villages could not buy fish.

There is none for sale.

During the rare times when the ubiquitous fish cars complete with sound systems playing songs of Max Surban to attract buyers are able to penetrate the remote areas, the price of the fish would already be beyond the reach of the poor families.

At over P200 per kilo, fish is no longer affordable to a farming family whose average daily income is only P150.

The Bureau of Fisheries and the Philippine Fishports Development Authority, two agencies of government which are under the Department of Agriculture, are now coming up with a nation-wide program which would facilitate the distribution of the fish straight from the fish ports to the remote towns of the country.

I have named the program “Isda sa Kabukiran” or Fish in the Rural Areas.

This would entail the direct involvement of the BFAR and the PFDA in a distribution system where in the fishing communities, fishermen would be organised and provided with ice-making and cold storage facilities.

From the cold storage facilities, fish would then be brought by fish cars owned by the fishermen’s associations to strategic locations in the interior areas called the Provincial Fish Distribution Centers.

The Centers would be equipped with cold storage and ice-making facilities where fish vendors could buy wholesale for resale in the wet markets.

In other more remote areas, a municipal Fish Distribution Center could also be set up where local vendors could also buy wholesale at a lower price.

Under the present system, private fish traders who own fish cars buy from the fish consolidators in the fish ports.

They would then bring the fish supply to the interior towns but by then the price would already be too high mainly because of the profit earned by the fish consolidator and the kilos of fish the fish cars throw into the police and military checkpoints along the route.

By the time, the P25-per-kilo “Tamban” reaches the interior areas, the price would have already breached P200 per kilo.

PFDA General Manager Glen Pangapalan proposed the system to me which I immediately approved because it fits President Duterte’s concept of a National Food Supply Positioning and Distribution System.

BFAR Director, Undersecretary Eduardo Gongona, was immediately directed to coordinate with the PFDA for the immediate implementation of this program for 2017.

“Isda sa Kabukiran” now stands as one of the major innovations in the fishing industry which would ensure that our fishermen would earn more from their labor.

It would also ensure the availability of low-cost fish in the countryside where farmers and farm workers also contribute to President Duterte’s commitment of “Available and Affordable Food.”

#IsdaSaKabukiran! #Changeishere! #PresRodyCares! #DuterteDelivers!

(Photo credit. All photos attached to this post were downloaded from Google.)