MANILA, Philippines — Agriculture Secretary William Dar has emphasized the need for public-private partnership projects to accelerate the development of the agriculture sector, in line with ensuring the country’s food sovereignty.
“To accelerate the development and growth of the farming sector, we need to bring Public-Private Partnership – meaning build, operate and transfer – to attract big money from foreign and Filipino investors and the private sector,” Dar said during his visit at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños (UPLB) on Tuesday.
Highlighting the importance of food security in ensuring food sovereignty, Dar called on universities and other academic institutions to urge legislators to provide much-needed substantial budgetary support to the Department of Agriculture (DA) to enable it to unlock the full potential of Philippine agriculture.
While food security relates to the protection of current food systems, the DA explained that food sovereignty refers to the many components and measures in mitigating hunger and poverty, including production, distribution and consumption, and the actual food system itself.
It stressed that food sovereignty calls for trade and investment activities, and promotes control over resources, agrarian reform and tenure security for small-scale producers, agroecology and biodiversity, among others.
“Rooted at the grassroots food movements, food sovereignty involves the participation of not only the food producers but the citizens as well,” the DA said.
Dar said the participation of the private sector is crucial in attaining the food targets of the government.
During the visit, Dar and UPLB Chancellor Jose Camacho, Jr., signed two separate memoranda of understanding (MOU) for collaborative programs, which will support the local production of seeds and biotechnology input, as well as the intensified crop production efforts of the government.
“We welcome this partnership with UPLB because with all the global economic challenges brought by Covid 19 pandemic, compounded with the Russia-Ukraine crisis, we need to cushion the effects of these crises,“ Dar said.
He said the local production of food remains sufficient.
With all the challenges that the local agriculture is facing, it is high time for the government to invest so that the country may attain food sovereignty level and not depend heavily on imports.
“We can produce our own food if we unlock the potential of agriculture by providing a significant budget and funds so that science and technology, as well as research and development can grow side-by-side,” he said.
Under the MOU, the DA will get the expertise of UPLB through the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB) for seeds and the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (NIMBB) for biotechnology inputs. These will strengthen the public sector network of government, private sectors, farmers, and other stakeholders to supply the national requirement on seeds and biotechnology inputs, and complement seeds and biotech inputs supply from private company efforts.
UPLB-IPB will undertake programs supporting the production of seeds/scions/stocks for priority crops of assured genetic provenance such as commercial crops (plantation, fruits, vegetables, legumes, root crops) and food staples crops (rice, corn, cassava, and adlay).
UPLB-NIMBB, on the other hand, will support the production of biofertilizers, feed ingredients/supplements, probiotics and other products of biotechnology.
“The collaboration aims to support the research for development on seeds technologies and biotechnology, and other related items,” the DA said.