Been there…

Red onion retail prices still range from P200 to P300. Even the Super Ate ng Pangulo has joined in poking fun at the situation, giving away garlands of Ilocos red onions and garlic instead of flowers or chocolates to her Senate colleagues on Valentine’s Day.

With long-festering problems bedeviling Philippine agriculture now creating multiple crises in the sector, what can the government do?

From what we’re seeing, it looks like the approach is that the same problems call for… the same solutions: curb smuggling, empower small-scale farmers, expand cold chain facilities and prune the number of middlemen.

The devil, as always, will be in the implementation of the solutions. Can Marcos 2.0 do things differently?

Tough guy Rodrigo Duterte ranted and raved and described the Bureau of Customs as “corrupt to the core.” But he couldn’t seem to make a dent in the smuggling of even prohibited drugs. Throughout his presidency and leadership changes in the BOC, shabu and its precursors freely entered the country literally by the ton.

As for digitalization, which has been implemented in the BOC since the Ramos administration, Duterte’s capable finance chief, Sonny Dominguez, told me at the start of his stint that Customs crooks daubed sardine sauce on computer wires, which were gnawed by rodents that proliferate in the ports.

Stop smuggling? Good luck on this. Among the biggest coddlers of smugglers are influential politicians and the well-connected. Just seven months into the new administration, the BOC chief has been sacked. Maybe the new one can achieve some progress in the campaign.

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For short-term solutions, even some agricultural producers say the country has no choice for now but to import certain commodities to stabilize supply and prices.

Importation failed to work in the case of sugar, whose average retail prices still hover between P90 to P110. Some experts say this was because the importation was too little, too late. And even with the biggest institutional consumers of sugar – manufacturers of beverages, ice cream and other sweetened processed foods – saying they are having a hard time procuring white refined sugar, certain quarters still insisted that there was no shortage.

If there is no shortage, why do sugar prices refuse to go down below P90, much less to the government’s hoped-for retail price of P80 per kilo?

Prices of certain agricultural products are surging amid supply shortages, whether artificial or not. Producers say smugglers, importers and middlemen are the ones who are making a killing.

Sadly, this story has become all too familiar and a recurring theme in our country.

The solutions propounded also give us a sense of déjà vu: apart from dealing decisively with smuggling, government officials say farmers must be assisted in forming cooperatives and given the support services from farm to market, including post-harvest and cold chain facilities. The number of middlemen must be drastically reduced.

But we’ve been there, done that… or at least tried to. We can’t even make up our mind on agrarian reform. Launched by the elder Ferdinand Marcos and pursued by Corazon Aquino, people are now saying it is a failed experiment and the country should go for economies of scale in agricultural production.

Agrarian reform beneficiaries, on the other hand, say the promised farm support services and assistance in making cooperatives work did not materialize. They complain that middlemen who control post-harvest services, cold chain and other storage facilities have been squeezing farmers dry.

Because of low profit margins and high vulnerability to the vagaries of nature, younger generations of Filipinos do not see agriculture as a path to advancement in life. The rice terraces of Banaue, with their specialty mountain rice, are increasingly lying fallow. Farming is equated with poverty.

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Being the concurrent secretary of agriculture, President Marcos is under heavier pressure to deal decisively with the crisis in agriculture.

Let’s see if the 440,000 metric tons of additional imports, arriving from this month through April, will make a dent in sugar prices.

For the other solutions, Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual says the measures include cutting several links in the value chain from farm gate to retail. He declined to go into details, saying he did not want to telegraph the government’s moves.

Many of these links in the value chain are operated by political families or the well-connected. Whether Marcos can go head-to-head with them would be interesting to watch.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is part of efforts to raise agricultural competitiveness as the Marcos administration prepares to approve the country’s participation in a wide-ranging free-trade agreement – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

RCEP, Pascual reiterated on One News’ “The Chiefs” last Wednesday, will not cover most of the country’s basic agricultural commodities such as rice, sugar and onions.

Still, the agricultural sector is posing the strongest objection to the country’s entry into RCEP, which President Marcos has certified as a priority in his legislative agenda.

Pascual, a staunch supporter of RCEP, emphasizes that with or without the free trade agreement, the agriculture sector is ailing and needs to have its competitiveness boosted.

The DTI has been assisting the Department of Agriculture in monitoring retail prices of onions, sugar and other farm produce. But the DTI’s bigger role in enhancing agricultural competitiveness is to bring farmers closer to the retailers.

Pascual said the DTI has touched base with the private sector to bypass several of the links in the value chain in procuring farm produce.

At the same time, Pascual said the government will be financing the construction of cold chain facilities across the country, which will be managed by farmers’ cooperatives.

The government will provide skills training and other forms of support, he said, so farmers’ cooperatives can work and can efficiently run cold chain facilities.

Through several administrations, we’ve heard various permutations of these measures. Marcos 2.0, however, is only into its eighth month. And the secretary of agriculture is the President himself.

We can still hope he can make a difference.