Cooperatives

This conversation about what ails our agriculture grows by the day.

The problem, it becomes clear, is multidimensional. It is not enough to look at the economics of our agriculture. We have to look at the cultural patterns that envelope it as well as the institutional formations that enable this sector to be properly governed.

Last week, former Bulacan governor Roberto “Obet” Pagdanganan offered to brief me about cooperatives. This has been a decades-long passion for him. He travelled the world to study cooperatives of every sort.

Building cooperatives was a key plank of his administration in his 12 years as provincial governor. In 2002, he published a hefty book on the subject: An Urgent Call for Cooperative Revolution! In 2020, while all of us were idled by the pandemic, he put out a pamphlet “How to Win the War Against Poverty and Attain Food Security – the Cooperative Way.” Last March 2, he developed a comprehensive power point presentation for the Rotary Club Manila on the subject.

Obet observes that nearly all economies with strong agricultural bases also have extensive cooperative foundations. In New Zealand, a cooperative exports billions of liters of milk to the rest of the world. Credit Agricole, one of France’s more important banks, is an outgrowth of an agricultural cooperative. In many advanced industrial societies, the majority of the population are members of a cooperative.

It should be evident what cooperatives could do. They offer a way to organize production, capitalize farms and develop more efficient ways to market the produce. In the Philippines, research show that crops have to go through at least six layers of middlemen between the farmer and the final consumer. This is untenable. It makes our food expensive and our farmers poor.

A cooperative could not only simplify marketing of the produce, it could help finance farming as well. With a strong financing backbone, our agriculture could be more efficient. It could adopt new emerging technologies to improve yield.

We tried capitalizing our farms the wrong way: through the blunt force of legislative fiat. Years ago, the Agri-Agra Law was passed to force banks to lend money to farmers. Since the risk of doing so was so high, many banks opted to pay the fine for violating the law than actually lending to individual farmers. When, during the Marcos I administration, rural banks were forced to lend farmers so that they could purchase farm inputs, 800 such banks had to be closed for bankruptcy.

Obet thinks the way out of the present agricultural quagmire is to rapidly build cooperatives. Instead of attempting some high finance venture like the Maharlika Investment Fund, we could channel funds to support the cooperative movement. That will go a long way in rebuilding our nation’s ability to feed itself. It will certainly rescue our farmers from the poverty trap our agriculture, in its present mode, condemns them to.

Something went wrong somewhere in our effort to build agricultural cooperatives. I read through Obet’s writing and even he cannot seem to put a finger on it.

It could be that we tried to organize cooperatives without building up the financial literacy of our farmers. It could be that we lacked a well trained cadre of management professionals to properly operate our cooperatives. It could be that many farmers saw cooperatives merely as a way to access largesse from government rather than a means for our farmers to independently build up their capital. Many of our “cooperatives” have not transcended the “paluwagan” model and so are chronically unable to aggregate capital.

But being the fierce advocate that he is, Obet Pagdanganan is not about to give up on the prospect of building strong cooperatives to help modernize our agriculture. We need him to keep that advocacy burning

Assassins

Last February 17, Lanao del Sur Governor Mamintal Adiong Jr. was ambushed. He was seriously wounded but survived.

Last weekend, six heavily armed men in military gear, entered the compound of Negros Oriental Governor Roel Degamo and began shooting almost randomly. Degamo did not survive that assault although three suspects were captured shortly after the incident. One other suspect was reported killed in follow-up police operations.

In between the two incidents, several other local officials were assassinated. Such was the seriousness of concern over these assassinations, House Speaker Martin Romualdez summoned top police officials to brief him on the situation. This does seem to be an epidemic of murders targeting elected local officials.

It is probably too early to rush to a conclusion about what is going on. The motives for the attacks might be diverse. But the impunity with which these assassinations appears to have been carried out is something that stares us all in the face.

In a way, there is really little the police can do to prevent murderous attacks against local officials. These officials are always exposed, publicly dealing with their constituents. There is only so much resources that can be devoted to securing public officers.

We had all wanted to believe the country progressed from the time when political scores were settled by murderous means. This recent spate of assassinations throw us back to a time when local officials were constantly vulnerable to hired guns.

We are nevertheless encouraged by the swiftness of the police response to the Degamo killing. This will, hopefully, be the standard for quick and efficient police work.

As in all crimes, only the certainty of being caught is effective deterrent to political killings.