Road To Food Security! (1st of a Series) Food Security Plan Starts With Supply, Demand Map

In addressing the high cost of food commodities and rising inflation, our government planners must be reminded that there are very basic and practical measures which could be undertaken to bring down prices of food while increasing the income of our farmers.
As a country of over 7,000 islands, the main issue of food availability and affordability in the Philippines is not the lack of supply but poor “repositioning” of agricultural goods.
“Tamban” or Sardines Fish sold for P250 in the big cities, sells for less than P50 in many coastal towns of Zamboanga del Norte.
In Nueva Vizcaya, Tomatoes sell for P10 per kilo and the excess are thrown away to rot by farmers but the Sardines factories of Zamboanga City import Tomato paste from China.
The classic example of this anomaly is the Onion produced by farmers in Mindoro bought by traders for as low as P12 during peak harvest and sold last December for a ridiculous and immoral price of P700.
Recently, a Brother Mason sought my help in selling Mindoro Onion in Mindanao for pick up price of P35 per kilo which is very low considering that the price in Kidapawan City is over P100 per kilo.
When I inquired on the cost of trucking from Mindoro to Davao City, I was told that they were charging P25 per kilo and that ended the attempt to help Mindoro Onion farmers.
I wrote about the Food Repositioning Strategy in the book “Feeding Millions: The Duterte Food Security Strategy” published in 2015.
When President Rodrigo Duterte appointed me as Agriculture Secretary, I asked the help of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN-FAO) in conducting the “National Food Consumption Quantification Study.”
The NFCQS started by the UN-FAO in 2017 and completed in 2019 aimed at providing data for the following concerns:
1. What kind of food do Filipinos prefer to eat;
2. What is the consumption level of these types of food?
3. Where and how could these types of food be produced in huge volumes?
4. How long could the Philippines’ land and water resources sustain the supply of these types of food?
While the study was being conducted, the Department of Agriculture initiated a National Food Security Summit which invited farmers groups and local government executives to a 2-day workshop to present the products which could be sourced from their areas and the DA support needed to boost the production.
There were four clusters: Northern Luzon, Southern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao and the participants included fishermen from as far as Sitangkay, Tawitawi.
The goal was to craft a National Food Demand and Supply Map which would be digitized to obtain a real-time situation of food availability and repositioning.
Unfortunately, following my very public clash with the Economic Managers over the issue of unimpeded Rice Importation under the Rice Tariffication Law and learning of the pressure of then Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez on his classmate, President Duterte, to ease me out of the Cabinet, I resigned in June 2019 and moved to the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA).
As is the common ending of stories of innovations in government, the program was shelved and forgotten when I left the DA in 2019.
With the current situation in the market, where ordinary wage earners could no longer afford to buy a full kilo of pork, there is a need to complete the National Food Supply and Demand Map to rationalize the positioning of food supplies.
This would drastically bring down the prices of food in the big markets and address high inflation numbers.
#GovernanceIsCommonSense!
#KungGustoMaramingParaan!