This is why I love my job! LIVING THE DREAMS OF MY GRANDFATHER

By Manny Piñol

Mr. President, on May 16, 2016, one week after you won the Presidential Elections and during the first public meeting you had with well-wishers, I was asked by Secretary Bong Go what assignment would I like to take under your Presidency.

I did not hesitate in telling Bong that I would like to take the Agriculture portfolio not knowing that the night before you already told everybody that I was your choice to be your Agriculture Secretary.

Sir, there is a deeper story on why I only wanted to serve in the Agriculture Department and that story started in this town, Dingle, in a poor village called Liboo and it involved a poor farmer, Jose Cordero Piñol, and his son, Bernardo.

Jose was my grandfather, Mr. President, and Bernardo my father and they both came from this town. This is where my roots are, Mr. President.

They were so poor that when my father went up the stage to receive his grade school diploma, he was not wearing any shoes.

My grandfather was not just a farmer. He was actually a tenant, someone who tilled a piece of land owned by a rich family and relied on his share from the crops.

When he heard about Mindanao, he towed his two carabaos and along with his brother, Silvestre, boarded a slow boat and settled in Cotabato before the war.

As a young boy born and raised in the farm and in the midst of poverty, Mr. President, I saw the problems, hardships, and pains suffered by the farmers.

Hindi makautang ng pambili ng binhi at kung makautang man, pinapatay naman sya sa interest.

When the farmer sells his products, it is the trader who sets the price.

As a young boy Sir, I prayed that somehow someday, somebody would come along to lift the Filipino farmers out of poverty.

This was why I prayed hard that you would agree to run for President and when you did, I prayed hard that you would win because I saw in you the heart of a leader who could change the lives of the Filipino farmers.

When you won, I dreamed of no other position but to be your Agriculture Secretary.

Under your leadership Sir, we are slowly giving realization to the dreams of my grandfather, my father and other farmers.

You have granted free irrigation, we have started offering an easy access credit program and we are intensifying our mechanization program.

Our fishermen are receiving fishing boats and ice plants and cold storage facilities will be constructed this year in key fishing grounds to lessen post harvest losses.

Also this year, upon you instruction, we will be asking Filipino shipbuilders to build the Food Boat which will be used to carry food commodities from the farflung production areas to the population centers.

Under your Presidency, Agriculture grew by almost 5% coming from negative 1.14% during the last year of the previous administration.

Our rice industry grew at a rate of 5.65%, the highest in the world today, and last year, our farmers produced our highest rice yield in history at 19.4-million metric tons.

The report that we have rice shortage is “fake news,” Mr. President. It was concocted by people who wanted to create an artificial rice shortage so that they could manipulate the prices in the market.

In fact, if go by quarterly assessment of our rice supply, we have achieved rice sufficiency in the last quarter of 2017 because we had a surplus of 2.7-million metric tons of rice and by the end of this quarter our projected surplus is 3-million metric tons.

In spite of these developments, however, our mission to provide Filipinos with Available and Affordable Food is not complete yet.

Food is available but since the Farm-to-Market Food Supply Chain is controlled by traders and middlemen, the consumers could not feel the benefits of greater productivity because the prices of food commodities are very high.

This is why we are holding this TienDA and the Bigas ng Masa. We would like to connect our farmers directly with the consumers.

Sir, while the price of commercial rice in Metro Manila ranges from P45 to P60, the rice farmers of Dingle are selling rice to our soldiers today for as low as P33 and our Bigas ng Masa in Metro Manila sells at P38 per kilo.

This is where we are focusing our efforts now, Mr. President.

We should establish a Food Supply Chain that directly links our farmers to the consumers, just like what South Korea and Japan did.

If we could open up Farmers’ Outlets in each and every town in the country, Mr. President, our consumers would feel the difference and the fulfillment of our commitment of Available and Affordable Food would be complete.

These outlets could be manned and managed by our returning Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW). In fact, many of these OFWs are also sons and daughters of farmers.

Upon your instructions, Sir, the Department of Agriculture could initiate the engagement with the Department of Labor and Employment and the Department of Trade and Industry.

Together, we could come up with a program to make food supply available and affordable to the consumers with the opening of TienDA farmers outlets all over the country which would be manned and managed by our OFWs.

Thank you, Mr. President and I am so grateful that you came to visit the birthplace of my grandfather Jose Cordero Piñol, whose elusive dreams and unfulfilled aspirations as a farmer are now being realized under your leadership.

((This was the message I delivered during the visit of President Rody Duterte in Dingle, Iloilo yesterday. Manny Piñol. Attached photo taken by Alarico Nuestro, DA-AFID Biyaheng Bukid.)