War against hunger and poverty

BANTAY GOBYERNO

Ike Señeres

It’s hard enough to have one enemy in the war against hunger and poverty, but the bad news is that we not only have one enemy, because we have five enemies. El Nino is already a big problem in itself; imagine how that one problem multiplies when you add the other problems brought about by climate change, natural disasters, the ASEAN integration and the WTO agreement. Some of us may be inclined to think that climate change and natural disasters are one and the same, but that is not necessarily the case. Climate change may cause some natural disasters, but not all natural disasters are caused by climate change. Suffice it to say however that climate change could actually worsen the intensity of natural disasters.

Some of us may also think that the WTO agreement is no longer relevant, but that is also not the case, because it is still in force, and as a matter of fact, it could actually worsen the effects of the ASEAN integration. Just like the WTO agreement however, the ASEAN integration is actually a two edged sword that could be good for us or bad for us, depending on how we take advantage of it. In other words, both WTO and ASEAN could actually open up many opportunities for us instead of giving us problems. Looking back, it seems that we might have lost the first round of the WTO agreement, because it apparently brought us more problems instead of opportunities. With the first round of the ASEAN integration just around the corner, we should learn our lessons from the WTO experience and then move on with a strategy to win.

The free flow of goods, services, investments and workers are provided for in the ASEAN integration. Each of these four would create their own set of problems and opportunities, but it seems that the free flow of goods would have the most impact on our farmers, because it would also include the flow of fruits, vegetables, fish, poultry and livestock.

Looking ahead, it could also cause problems for manufacturers, particularly those whose products are no longer competitive when compared with the products from the rest of the region. In theory, the ASEAN integration would create many opportunities for consumers, because it would give them more choices of products that are not only better, but also cheaper. The problem is, some of these consumers might also lose their jobs as factories close; hence they may not have the money to buy these goods.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I would still say that hunger could cause poverty and vice versa, poverty could cause hunger. Of course the latter is quite obvious because without any money, poor people could no longer buy food, hence they go hungry. The former does not seem to be too obvious, but I could explain that by saying that when poor people go hungry, they could no longer work, hence they go deeper into poverty. Actually, we could just simplify this analysis by saying that if the poor people could have work, they would have the means to buy food so that they would not go hungry. As I see it now however, it would be difficult to give work to everyone at this point, but it would be possible to give food to everyone, not as a dole out, but in exchange for their participation in food production activities.

There is a saying about poor people having to sell their furniture in order to buy food. That saying may not be applicable here in the Philippines, because the poor people here may not even have furniture to sell. Unknown to many of us however, we are actually losing more money as we buy more food to eat, so much so that we could actually say that right now, the more we eat, the more we are becoming poorer. Since you are probably puzzled by what I just said, allow me to explain to you what I actually mean. Since more than 80% of our feed ingredients are imported, we could say that we are losing more money to foreign farmers as we are eating more fish, poultry and livestock. The irony here is that we are making the foreign farmers richer as our own local farmers are becoming poorer.

Mind you, we are not only importing more than 80% of our feed ingredients, we are also importing about that much of our milk and flour requirements. The data about rice importation is confusing, because we are still importing a large volume even if the government says that we are already 100% self-sufficient. As we know it, milk and flour are basic ingredients that are used for so many derivative products such as breads and cakes. I really can’t figure out how that happened, that an agricultural country like ours is now importing much of what we eat, but never mind that, because we could still turn things around. For a start, it is possible for us to locally produce 100% of our feed ingredients, and it does not even take rocket science to do that. After that, we could aim to produce at least 50% of our milk and flour requirements, and that too would not require rocket science.

The leaves of leguminous plants such as Madre de Cacao (kakawate) could take the place of soybeans in order to supply the vegetable proteins in the feed ingredients and so could many other crops that could be planted even around the backyard. Earthworms could be fed with food scraps to produce the animal proteins. Fish could be grown and filleted, so that the bones and other scraps could be used as fish protein. For as long as we could remember, our feed millers have been importing soybeans, meat & bone meal and fish meal, based on their claim that they could not buy enough local supplies of these materials. The truth is, fish, poultry and livestock could grow by feeding these vegetable proteins only, and the best proof of that are the goats, cows and water buffaloes (carabaos) that only eat grass and yet are as strong as any carnivore.

Wheat is still the most popular raw material for flour, but there are many other raw materials such as moringa (malungay) leaves, carrots, sweet potatoes (kamote), squash, cassava and many others that could even be grown in our backyards. I am not saying however that we should limit our food production in our backyards only, because there are so many vacant lands in the provinces that could be converted to farmlands to make them more productive. In the past, we have already proven that we could produce our milk requirements locally, and all that we have to do is to do it all over again. It has been said so many times that we need farm-to-market roads, irrigation and post-harvest facilities in order to succeed in agriculture. I will not argue with that, but I think what we need most is good management practices coupled with the political will to succeed. If there is a will, there is a way.

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