Road To Food Sufficiency! ‘With 36,298-km. Coastline We Could Raise Enough Fish’

For a country with the 5th longest coastline in the world at 36,298 kilometers and so many coves and bays for fish farming, it is a great irony that the Philippines imports fish.

Just to correct the impression that I am anti-importation, let me emphasize that my advocacy is for the Philippines to achieve food sufficiency, if not food sovereignty.

Kung kaya lang naman natin na padamihin ang ating produksyon ng isda sa Pilipinas, why don’t we come up with a doable program to boost fish production.

While conservation and closed fishing programs have improved our pelagic fish population, huwag tayo umasa sa isdang nahuhuli sa dagat dahil hindi natin ma-project ang ating production levels.

Instead, let us focus more on marine and aquaculture production, especially fish cage farming in our coves and bays because this would allow us to set production targets.

Ang ibig kong sabihin, kung halimbawa 40 kilograms ang average fish consumption ng bawat Pilipino kada taon, how many fish cages do we need to establish to supply that assuming that each fish cage could yield a harvest of 40,000 kilos every year?

To realize these potentials, we need to craft enabling legislations and set policies which would boost our production potentials.

There is a need to establish and fully fund large and modern hatcheries in each of the three island groupings of the country, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao manned by hundreds of fisheries experts whose talent and expertise are largely unrecognized.

Except for the private hatcheries established by companies commercially producing Bangus like Saranggani Bay, maliliit ang hatcheries ng gobyerno.

Hatcheries are very important. Napabayaan natin ang mga ito for so many years and the Philippines relied on imported fry from Indonesia for its Bangus production program.

Pati ang BFAR personnel na karamihan mga fisheries experts napabayaan din with many of them working as Job Orders or Contract of Service for as long as 20 years.

In fact, isa ito sa pinagtuunan ko ng pansin when I was Secretary of Agriculture where I directed all Regional Directors of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources to operationalize their hatcheries.

I also issued an order to all BFAR Directors to stop illegal fishing in their areas or face administrative sanctions and directed them to encourage fish cage farming.

The result was a positive growth for the Fisheries Sector in 2018 to 2019 for the first time in almost half-a-century.

Kaya nating maging fish sufficient at di na umasa sa importation pero kailangan tamang legislations and polices ang ipapasa ng ating Senado.

Hindi uubra yong pagpaagawa ng mga maliliit na hatcheries na hinihingi ng mga political leaders sa kanilang mga nasasakupang area.

While the intention is noble and admirable, mini-hatcheries will only entail a lot of expense but it will not contribute to the production of sufficient fry for our Bangus and high-value fish production program.

Makinig tayo and let us engage the experts. They know better.

#GovernanceIsCommonSense!

#KungGustoMaramingParaan!

(This video was taken with Maqueda Bay of Samar in the background by the media team of the Biyaheng Senado Ni Manny Piñol.)