Learn from mistakes! Dependence on Importation: Perfect Recipe for Food Crisis

This is a story of two countries, one of which abandoned agriculture and relied on imports while the other allowed low-priced imported food to flood its market, and how their economic policies led to food shortage and hunger.

Let me just emphasize that the issues that I will raise in this post have nothing to do with my current job as Chairman of the Mindanao Development Authority.

This article comes from Citizen Manny Piñol, the farmer and food sovereignty and self-sufficiency advocate.

There is this country in South America, whose name I will not mention here to avoid a diplomatic row, which was so rich and awash with cash because of its oil resources.

It abandoned its agriculture sector and relied on imported food items from the U.S. and other neighboring countries.

When the country’s oil industry collapsed and the U.S. imposed economic sanctions, food shortage and later hunger set in leading many of its citizens to move by the thousands to a nearby country to be able to survive.

The other country in the Carribean suffers from a food crisis after its policy makers swallowed hook-line-and-sinker the propaganda that flooding the market with low-priced imports is good for the economy as it would address inflation and benefit consumers.

The flood of cheap imported goods, however, led local farmers to abandon their farms and production plummeted.

Today, the country is being helped by international humanitarian agencies to address the widespread hunger among its people.

The problem with countries which abandon their local agricultural production and rely on importation is that when things turn bad and food shortage sets in, it would take sometime before the agriculture sector could bounce back.

It is not like turning on an electric light with just one click of the switch.

In Agriculture, you have to plant and wait until the plants bear fruit and that would take years.

Lest I am misunderstood, let me clearly state that I am not totally against importation because that is the norm in the free market.

Yes, let us import what we need to fill up the shortfall on local production.

But to neglect our food production programs, agriculture and fisheries and be dependent on importation is an entirely different story.

That should not be the economic policy for the Philippines considering that we have fertile farm lands, abundant supply of water, the 5th longest coastline in the world and so many unemployed in the countryside who would be willing to get into food production if the rewards are fair.

What makes food sufficiency and food sovereignty a must for the Philippines are the threats of Climate Unpredicatability, Geopolitics and another Pandemic.

Relying on Vietnam and other countries for our rice supply could be disastrous because these rice exporting nations are also vulnerable to Climatic Aberrations like El Niño.

The brewing conflict in the West Philippine Sea and another Pandemic could also disrupt the supply chain resulting in a food shortage.

We must, at all cost and at whatever cost, work hard to produce our own food and achieve food independence.

Let us all learn lessons from the tragedy which befell on the two nations which abandoned their agriculture and allowed imported goods to flood theie markets.

Remember this: In the end, relief operations and food assistance for our hungry people during a crisis will prove to be more expensive than our investments in irrigation, food production and post-harvest facilities.

#GovernanceIsCommonSense!

#WiseIsHeWhoLearnsFromOthersFailures!