STRAIGHT FROM THE BIG CITY

Assisting rural and urban businesses
IKE ‘Ka Iking’ SENERES

Considering the large volume of goods that the Philippines is now importing, can you imagine what it could do for local business and industry if some if not most of the imports could be substituted with local products? Believe it or not, it is not only the issue of quality that is causing local buyers to depend more on imports; it is also the lack of information about the local alternatives that are available.
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When I was Director of the UNDP Transfer of Knowledge through Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN) Program, I sent a market intelligence expert to Davao City , to study the problems and potentials of the local cut flower industry there. To my surprise, the expert told me during his debriefing that Mindanao as a whole could supply practically the same quality and variety of cut flowers that Amsterdam and Singapore are supplying to the five star hotels of Metro Manila, except for the fact that these hotels hardly know that they do have local alternatives.
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Mr. Alan Hicks, an American expatriate here in Metro Manila tells me that the large volume of first class American pork that the five star hotels are importing now could also be produced locally, with exactly the same quality. The secret is in the feeds he says, because there is not much difference in the air and sunshine of America and the Philippines. Can you imagine how much is the value of this import substitution potential that is going to waste?
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Several participants of the Sama-Kabuhayan and Agro Amigo programs of the Inter-Charity Network (ICN) are now ready to graduate into becoming micro-entrepreneurs. I am now organizing them to become the core group of the Association of Philippine Rural and Urban Businesses (APRUB). This new group will mobilize and assist other micro-entrepreneurs so that they could jointly market their products locally and globally.
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As initial projects, APRUB has tied up with a Hong Kong company to open a trading center in a Pasay City shopping center. It has also tied up with an American company to operate an e-commerce portal in the web, a la eBay.
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Malnutrition is a “grandchild” of poverty in the sense that it is the “child” of hunger, and the latter being the “child” also of poverty. This is a sad reality that could only happen in a poor developing country like the Philippines where one social problem has the tendency to breed one problem after another. The sequence does not end with these three “generations” because malnutrition is also the “mother” of anemia, a health problem that is apparently prevalent among the poor communities in our society. Sad to say, malnutrition also appears to be the “mother” of learning difficulties among our poor students, a factor that also contributes to their inability to become uncompetitive in the job market.
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Strictly speaking, not all poor people go hungry, and perhaps not all those who go hungry every now and then become malnourished. Generally speaking however, it could be said that a large percentage of our population are not eating balanced diets, or at the very least, they may not be getting the right balance of meat, fish and vegetable proteins in their diets. There was a time when fish was cheaper than meat, but this is no longer true nowadays and to compound the problem, even vegetables have also gone up in prices.
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Although it may be a poor comparison to make, commercially grown pigs and chickens are actually eating balanced diets than the people who could potentially afford to eat them, since these animals are fed with the right combinations of proteins coming from animal, fish and vegetable sources. Add to that the irony that these animals are actually housed in better conditions than many of our people, some in air conditioned farm structures as a matter of fact.
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Considering all the chain reactions caused by poverty, the bottom line issue in relation to nutrition is that people must eat, no matter what they eat, for as long as they would survive. This does not mean however that the government should no longer care what the people would eat, because this issue is related to the quality of life, and no matter what the government does or does not do, it is still ultimately responsible for improving the quality of life among our people. Notwithstanding the pros and cons of this issue, it appears that the biggest priority of the government now and forever is to bring down the prices of food, and I mean quality food for everyone.
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Believe it or not, graft and corruption is a major factor in the increase of food prices, meaning that these prices would really go down if only the government could also bring down this root cause. Corruption happens in the import of goods from abroad and in the transport of goods from the provinces. When the government was apparently embarrassed about reports that hunger was already prevalent in this country, it reacted by announcing programs to feed the poor and to distribute low priced food items in poor communities. We do not know what happened to the feeding program, but we know that the distribution program has started in a few places only.
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Congressman Luis Villafuerte cited several good reasons for advocating the creation of a separate Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DFAR), but should we really create new agencies to handle each and every specific task? To begin with, the government is supposed to be merging already the agencies with similar or complementary functions for reasons of efficiency and economy, so why this new fractional move? As I see it, the lack of results in the fisheries and aquatic sector could be attributed more to the lack of direction rather than attention. **
Fish farming is an agricultural activity even if its outputs are aquatic in nature. The same is true in the case of growing seaweeds and other aquatic plants, which are essentially agricultural crops strictly speaking. In some countries, “factory buildings” are already growing fish in industrial size fish tanks, but these are nonetheless supervised by centralized agricultural agencies. As I see it, growing fish in ponds or tanks is just another business that could logically be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Trade and Industry if push comes to shove.
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A Filipino engineer has come up with an aquatic feed mix that effectively solves the viral and bacterial infections that has caused the downfall of the fishpond industry. With this solution already in place, the government should move to revive the industry, with or without the proposed DFAR. ** Tune in to "Gulong ng Kabuhayan" on DZXL (558 KHZ) Mon to Fri 6 to 6:45 PM. Join the InterCharity Network. We assist you in looking for a job, starting a small business or getting a scholarship. Email ike@kaiking.net or text us at 09196466323.Unit 324, Guadalupe Commercial Complex, Makati.