DA, LGUs JOINTLY CRAFT
PH FOOD SECURITY PLAN
By Manny Piñol
What is the population and the food consumption requirement of the Philippines now?
What will be the population and food requirement of the country over the next five years?
Where will we source the food? How do we produce it?
These are the basic questions which will be answered in the National Food Security Plan which the Department of Agriculture (DA) has started crafting after the completion of a 4-Cluster national consultations with the different cities and municipalities all over the country.
The National Food Security Plan will serve as the Road Map for the development of agriculture for the next five years based on the inputs submitted by the different local government units from all over the country.
During the consultations which involved Northern Luzon Cluster A on Oct. 2, Southern Luzon Cluster B on Oct. 3, Mindanao Cluster C on Oct. 5 and Visayas Cluster D on Oct. 9, the city and municipal mayors were asked to provide information on their population and their capacity to feed their constituents.
The DA also asked them to indicate what assistance they needed so they could increase their food production capacity to include farm to market roads, small irrigation projects, post harvest facilities, farm machinery and equipment requirements and other support services.
Town and cities which could not attain self-sufficiency on basic food commodities like rice because of their geographical limitations were asked to identify the next town where they could possibly source their food requirements.
The National Food Security Plan will be submitted to President Rody Duterte for endorsement to Congress for the enactment of the National Food Security Act of 2020 to cover up to 2024 or a five-year period.
The National Food Security Act will ensure that agricultural programs aimed at ensuring sufficient food supply for the country will be sustained even with political changes.
This actually addresses the age-old problem affecting Philippine agriculture which involves political influence on agricultural programs which prevents sustainability and continuity.
Even the location of farm to market roads is influenced by many political leaders who do not want these built in the areas of their political opponents.
As experienced in the past, even sound agricultural programs and directions are altered and amended every time there is a change the political leadership in the country.
The National Food Security Act is designed to draw a 5-Year Road Map which would identify all the interventions needed to improve agricultural productivity and provide appropriate funding allocation.
(Photos taken of the four legs of the City and Municipal Food Security Summits were taken by the Biyaheng Bukid team of DA-AFID.)
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