Failed experiment at DA

Various stakeholders in the agri-fishery sector organized themselves to speak with one voice with each of the five presidential candidates in the coming May 9 elections who aspire to succeed outgoing President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III. To get their message across to incoming policy-makers, they formed a coalition. After consultations with their respective memberships, they gathered and “unanimously” approved the key areas of concern for the agri-fishery sector and the recommended measures to address each.

Calling their coalition the Agri-Fisheries Alliance, they identified six “priority issues” that the five presidential candidates “should address in a strategic manner.” But being a newly organized group, they find difficulty seeking an audience with any of the five presidential wannabes. Thus, they sought to air their side through media in our Kapihan sa Manila Bay last Wednesday held at Café Adriatico in Malate, Manila.

The Agri-Fisheries Alliance, formed in December last year, seeks to work for agriculture development and to improve the lot of small farmers and fisher folk who reportedly comprise the bulk of some 40 percent of rural poor in our country. It is composed of the following:

• Alyansa Agrikultura (AA), representing farmers and fisherfolk, has 42 federations and organizations covering all major agricultural sectors;

• Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. (PCAFI), representing agribusiness, includes value chain champions from 32 agriculture commodity groups;

• Coalition for Agriculture Modernization in the Philippine (CAMP), representing academe and science, has professors and scientists from universities and research institutes throughout the Philippines;

• Pambansang Koalisyon ng Kababaihan sa Kanayunan (PKKK), representing rural women, has women empowerment chapters in 42 provinces; and

• Agriculture Fisheries 2025 (AF2025), representing different agriculture stakeholder leaders.

The convenor of the Alliance is former undersecretary Ernesto Ordoñez who first served at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) during the administration of P-Noy’s late mother, former President Corazon Aquino. He was subsequently appointed as agriculture undersecretary by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo before she later named him secretary for presidential flagship projects and programs. But it was his stint at the Department of Agriculture where Ordoñez engaged with the many stakeholders of the Philippine agri-fishery sectors whose cause he is now espousing.

We were also joined at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay by Elias Jose Inciong, president of the United Broiler Raisers Association (UBRA) who also serves as their official spokesperson. A lawyer by profession, Inciong is the son of former labor leader Amado Gat Inciong.

In an official statement they read before our weekly breakfast forum, the Agri-Fishery Alliance identified their six-point agenda with the presidential candidates as follows: making effective the DA bureaucracy; to implement in full the stakeholders’ participation at the agricultural and fishery councils at the national, regional and provincial levels; to strictly supervise the 17,000 agriculture extension workers devolved from the DA to the local government units; to allocate larger bulk of credit and insurance to farmers and fisher folk from the Land Bank of the Philippines and the Philippine Crop Insurance Corp.; creation of Cabinet-level  private-public sector oversight body to curb growing incidence of agricultural smuggling, and to carry out effective agrarian reform that provides for support services to farmer-beneficiaries.

Ordoñez and Inciong said official statistics have shown the country’s agriculture sector, other than education and defense establishments, was the biggest gainers in terms of budgetary support under the Aquino administration. For the past five years, the budget provisions for the annual budget of DA had grown by leaps and bounds.

Ironically, the contribution to the country’s annual economic growth from the agriculture sector, however, has been declining even while budgetary support grew by unprecedented proportions.

From P38.1 billion in 2011, the DA budget was doubled to P60.9 billion in 2012. The agriculture, fishery and forestry sector posted growth from 2.6 percent in 2011 to 2.7 percent the following year. But when the DA budget rose to P74.2 billion in 2013, however, growth from the agriculture sector dipped to 1.1 percent.

Perhaps, growth was affected by Super Typhoon Yolanda in November that same year.

In 2014, the DA budget rose to P90.5 billion and it somewhat helped push a wee bit the country’s agriculture output to 1.6 percent. Last year though, the DA budget was cut to P88.9 billion. This was obviously the result of department reorganization where four of its major agencies were cut from the supervision of Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala.

President Aquino signed Executive Order No. 5 in May 2014 that transferred to the Office of the President the following DA agencies to his newly created Cabinet post called Presidential Assistant for Food Security and Agricultural Modernization (PAFSAM): the National Food Authority (NFA); the National Irrigation Administration (NIA); the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), and the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA).

President Aquino named his Liberal Party (LP) ally, Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan to this Cabinet-ranked PAFSAM after the latter ended his second and last term at the Senate in July 2013. Pangilinan resigned in October last year to run as one of the LP’s 12-man Senate ticket. P-Noy named PAFSAM undersecretary Fredelia Guiza as officer-in-charge after the resignation of Pangilinan.

The creation of PAFSAM was supposed to help beef up the DA which at that time was supposedly organizationally challenged. Secretary Alcala had also been under fire from various stakeholders’ groups denouncing alleged shenanigans in rice importation, problems of delayed irrigation projects, the coco-lisap infestation, among other issues.

Unfortunately, this political accommodation did not produce miraculous gains for the country’s agriculture sector.

To borrow the terms used by P-Noy to describe the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the creation of PAFSAM was a “failed experiment.” This is why the various stakeholders would not want a repeat of this “failed experiment” at DA.