STRAIGHT FROM THE BIG CITY

Killing the agriculture budget
Ike ‘Ka Iking’ Señeres

I agree with Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap that the study of the Department of Budget and Management to cut down the budget of the Department of Agriculture is premature. However, I believe that these two agencies should conduct dialogs to find common grounds of agreement right away, as both of them may have strong points that are beneficial to the national interest.
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“White man speaks with forked tongue”, so said the Indians about the Cowboys who could not understand what the white folks are saying. Even if the Indians would understand, they would still suspect that there is something warped or wicked about the whites are saying, thus prodding them to be careful about what they would believe or not.

As I read through the report about the DBM study, I found it difficult to figure out what they were really saying, but somehow I sensed that in so many words, they were trying to write the death sentence to Philippine agriculture.
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Reading between the lines, I think that the DBM was saying that if the DA will continue to support Philippine agriculture, it will only cause the national deficit to worsen, and as a consequence it would also increase our national debt servicing burden.

I am not sure if the DBM consulted the National Economic Development Authority about their study, but somehow, someway, the DBM should have also looked at the macroeconomic and econometric effects of public investments in agriculture, regardless of what or how the national books of account would look like. By the way, as far as I recall, the Palace has already declared the non-existence of a fiscal crisis.
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An economic analyst shared with me the visual picture of a mother who is very proud about how big her bank deposits are, ignoring the fact that her children have no more food to eat on their table. In this example, the analyst says that the fictional mother suffers from misplaced priorities, as she has made the fiscal health of her household her top priority, setting aside the physical health of her children. Analyzing what the DBM said in its report, it seemingly wants to cut down on agriculture spending so that it could balance its books of accounts, ignoring the fact that they are putting the survival of farming families on the balance.
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I understand that the DBM is specifically the guardian of the government’s fiscal health, while the NEDA on the other hand is generally the guardian of the country’s economic health. Given this reality, the NEDA should really step in as the referee in the fray between the DBM and the DA, putting the higher interest of our national economic health above all. To complete the quartet, they should also invite the Department of Trade and Industry to join the process, because the DTI would certainly know the supply and demand situation in relation to agricultural crops in the country.
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Interpreting what the DBM said, it was in effect saying that after pumping so many millions of pesos into our agricultural economy, there appears to be no hope now and in the future that our rice production could ever increase, in effect saying also that future agricultural investment would not have any value added effects either. In other words, the DBM is saying that we should slow down in producing rice, and that instead, we should fast track our rice importation, transferring incentives instead to rice traders not growers.
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It is disappointing to note that none of the four agencies- the DBM, the DA, the NEDA and the DTI have realized that it is now possible to increase rice production using only 100 percent organic fertilizers, in other words completely doing away with chemical fertilizers. It seems that these four agencies also have not heard that rice crops using organic fertilizers have been proven to be lesser dependent on chemical pesticides, therefore decreasing as well another major expense item in the overhead of farming families.
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Although the signals of the DBM are really not that clear, it appears that it is blaming irrigation or the lack of it as the main reason for the apparent failure of rice production in our country up to now. It seems that the DBM bright boys are better in counting numbers than planting rice, because there is more to growing rice other than the water in the paddy. Not that I am trying to be a smart aleck, but it is actually possible to plant rice without digging irrigation canals, relying only on plain and simple plumbing and even more simply trucking (i.e. using water trucks).
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Setting aside water costs and labor costs, it is a well known fact that fertilizers and pesticides are the two biggest expense items of farming families. These are the two agricultural inputs that are actually bearing down these families, driving them down to poverty as a matter of fact. It is really just simple mathematics, but if only the farmers could reduce the costs of their agricultural inputs and correspondingly increase their selling prices, then they would end up with more profits, a way for them to get out of poverty. As an added advantage, the increased supply of food would also decrease the incidence of hunger in our country.
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On the practical side, it is theoretically easier to reduce the costs of agricultural inputs than to increase selling prices, but there is a methodical way of dealing with this given challenge. Still on the practical side, there is no other way of reducing the costs of agricultural inputs except to teach the farmers how to make their own feeds and fertilizers and the good news is, we already found a scientific way of doing this.

This is precisely the subject matter of the seminars about “Integrated Farming System” that we are now offering through the Alliance of Philippine Rural and Urban Business. We have conducted two seminars already, and a third batch is now being scheduled.
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For those who are reading my column for the first time, we are going to teach farmers to make their own feeds by growing their own yellow corn and vermin meal, sources of vegetable protein and animal protein respectively. Other than these, all they have to do is to add a feed mix supplement that would promote the full digestion of protein in the animal feeds, an ingredient that would also improve the meat conversion of the animals. Using the natural wastes from these animals, the farmers could also make their own fertilizers for their crops and trees.
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Going back to our main subject, rice is definitely still a good crop to plant, because it has a sure market in this dominantly rice eating country. Proof of this is the fact that we are importing rice by the billions, a large source of domestic sales if only it could be produced locally. Sad to say, the DBM is in effect saying in their study that we should practically give up on local production, in effect becoming just a mere rice consuming economy.

On behalf of all the rice farmers in this country, I am calling on the DBM to give the DA a chance to make good on the rice productivity program, hopefully the latter would also give the IFS a chance. Since this is a matter of life and death for our farmers, I hope that the government would listen.
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