Road To Food Security! (Last of a Series) Undertake Contract Farming To Bring Food Prices Down

When “Kalabasa” is bought from farmers for P5 per kilo in Alamada, Cotabato and sold for P25 in Iloilo, it is an incontrovertible proof that government has failed to build a virtual “bridge” across the wide chasm that separates farmers and consumers.
There was a practical but brilliant solution to this problem which was introduced 56 years ago by Pres. Ferdinand Marcos, father and namesake of the incumbent President, Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., and it is called the Food Terminal Inc.
Located in a 120-hectare government property in what is now Taguig City, the FTI consolidated, processed and marketed basic food items coming from the provinces for the market of Metro Manila.
The purpose was very basic – reduce the tiers of traders and middlemen who jacked up prices of basic food commodities.
Vindictive politics which swept the country following the departure from power of the Marcoses, however, was the death knell for the FTI.
A huge part of the property, 74 hectares, was sold to Ayala Land in 2012 and the FTI operations was reduced to leasing out what was left of the area estimated at 25 hectares.
The corporate FTI, however, still exists and if it is rehabilitated and its functions expanded, it could serve as the virtual “bridge” which could connect the farmers with consumers to bring down food prices.
Here is how it is done:
1. Identify the basic food items needed by Filipino families on a daily basis whose uncontrolled prices result in massive food inflation. These would include: Rice, Fish, Meat (Pork, Beef, Chevon), Chicken, Vegetables, Fruits, Cooking Oil, Salt and Sugar;
2. Reactivate the FTI by establishing Food Consolidation and Distribution Centers in key areas all over the country making use of existing facilities of the National Food Authority (NFA), the Mother Agency of FTI, and acquire needed logistics facilities and equipment like Food Boats to ferry food supplies from the isolated production areas to the market;
3. Engage agricultural producers, farmers and fishermen, to supply the basic food items under a Contract Farming or Production Scheme where the volume of supply is based on a National Food Supply and Demand Data and the Food Producers are assured of a contract price;
4. Open People’s Market to be operated by FTI where consumers could walk in to buy the basic food items at limited quantities and operate an On-Line Food Market, especially in the big cities, to provide Filipino families access to affordable food.
Certainly, advocates of Free Market will oppose this idea because their contention is that government must never interfere with market movements and prices.
Surely, they will again propose that the best way to bring down food prices is to flood the market with imported commodities.
The reality, however, is that in spite of the flooding of imported food commodities in the local market, prices continued to rise and that is simply because they stick to their Globalization and Free Market Dogma and refuse to use common sense in solving the problem.
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!
#LinkingFarmsAndMarket!
(Photo downloaded from Philippine Star website.)