By Manny Piñol
Secretary of Agriculture
Whatever fate awaits the National Food Authority (NFA), whether it goes back to its mother agency, the Department of Agriculture, or it remains with the Office of the President, the fact remains that it is a vital agency which if operated properly could ensure food supply stability in the country.
In fact, it could even contribute to greater foreign earnings for farmers and the country as a whole if it performs the role of a National Export Agency which will promote and find markets for agricultural and fisheries products of the Philippines.
Over the years, the tragedy which befell on Filipino farmers and consumers is for the NFA to operate just as “a rice agency” whose task is to bring in imported rice, a function marked with issues of corruption.
The NFA should be more than just a rice importing or a rice price stabilizing agency. It should function just as the name suggests – National Food Authority.
In the book “Feeding Millions” which I wrote and published shortly before the elections of 2016, I said that the role of the NFA in the country’s food security program should be expanded beyond just buying palay locally or importing rice.
The NFA, aside from local palay procurement and rice importation, should also perform the following functions:
1. Establish and operate Regional Food Terminals which would consolidated all food commodities produced in excess in a region which then would be re-positioned in areas where these are needed.
An example of this would be the fruits of Mindanao being moved to Metro Manila and Luzon; the vegetables of the Cordillera shipped to the Visayas and Mindanao; fish from Zamboanga, Sulu, Basilan and Tawitawi brought to Metro Manila and the excess egg and chicken production of Luzon forwarded to the islands of the country.
2. Establish and operate Kadiwa TienDA outlets to allow low-income families to have access to fairly priced food commodities and where food commodities consolidated from the different regions of the country could also be offered.
3. Act as the National Agricultural Export Agency of farmers and fisherfolk who would like to penetrate foreign markets.
As it is now, farmers and fisherfolk are left on their own to find foreign markets for their products like bananas, mango, sardines, pineapple, bangus, tilapia, processed food and other products.
Only big corporations operating large farms in coordination with multi-national companies are able to find export markets for their produce.
In other countries, there are export agencies tasked to promote their farmers and fishermen’s products like India where an agency handles Buffalo Meat export and Vietnam where government agencies are tasked to promote and export their rice produce.
The NFA is accredited by the World Trade Organization as the only Trading Agency of the Philippines and yet it has never taken advantage of this.
Acting as the export agency of the Filipino farmers and fisherfolks and other high value crops producers could generate revenues for the NFA and make it financially viable.
These are roles which the NFA could perform regardless of whether it is under the Department of Agriculture or the Office of the President.
What is needed to allow the NFA to do these very important tasks would be to form a policy making body, as in the National Food Authority Council, which understands that there is more to food security than just importing and selling rice.
Unless reforms are done, the NFA will forever wallow in deep debts because it is solely performing a function which causes billions of pesos in losses every year.
(Attached photos were downloaded from public websites.)
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