Alarming state of Philippine agriculture

What’s happening with Philippine agriculture? Since the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte took over, our country’s agriculture growth has gone down to an alarming low. From 3% in the third quarter of 2016 when President Duterte came into office, it declined to 2.6% in the same quarter in 2017.

And based on the latest monitoring of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) for the third quarter of this year, agriculture posted a minus 0.4% growth. It was a much worse performance from the immediately preceding second quarter record of minus 0.2% growth.

But even with destruction wrought by super typhoon “Yolanda,” the country’s agriculture output never posted any negative growth until now for the second consecutive quarters.

From the latest PSA monitoring, the agriculture industry, which shared 81.7% to the entire sector, dropped by 0.1% in the third quarter of 2018. The major contributors to the decline were:  corn, 14.4%; palay, 5.4%; and cassava, 3.1%. Fishing, which accounted for 17.9% of the total agriculture sector, went down by 1.1% percent for the same period. Forestry also dropped 16.1%. 

Overall, the PSA reported the country’s economic growth – as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) – slowed down to 6.1% in the third quarter. Rising inflation in the country for the past months have apparently dampened consumer spending which is a major growth driver of the Philippine economy.

Woefully, the agriculture sector continues to be the laggard among three major industry groups, contributing a mere 0.03% to the third quarter GDP growth.

The services sector, which had a contribution of 4.1% to GDP, remained as the main driver of the economy. The industry sector, which contributed 2.1% to GDP, also grew slower by 6.2% as industrial firms grapple with rising prices of inputs and the weaker food demand by households. Food manufacturing was notably affected by the output decline in the agricultural sector, the increase in the price of sugar and tin cans.

All the sectors affected were apparently pulled down by agriculture’s declining production.          

The country’s agricultural productivity did not have it any better than the 6.5% growth recorded during the shortened administration of former president Joseph Estrada. This 6.5% annual growth of Philippine agriculture up to now has not been replicated, not even during the nine years in office of economist president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

The present sorry state of Philippine agriculture traces its roots when former president Benigno Simeon “PNoy” Aquino III emasculated the Department of Agriculture. A bright idea of P-Noy was to overhaul the Department by removing four attached agencies and placed them under the supervision of the Office of the President through his own created body called the Presidential Assistant on Food Security and Modernization (PAFSAM). The four agencies were the National Food Authority (NFA), the National Irrigation Authority (NIA), the Philippine Coconut Authority (NFA), and the Fertilizer and Pesticides Authority (FPA).

By virtue of Executive Order (EO) No. 165 he signed on May 5, 2014, PNoy transferred the four agencies under PAFSAM and appointed Liberal Party (LP) Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan who at that time had already “graduated” from his second and last term at the Senate. As previous chair of the Senate committee on agriculture, Pangilinan got some powers out of the DA chief who was also another former LP partymate in Congress, Secretary Proceso Alcala.

Pangilinan’s appointment came at the heels of “pressures” to deal with agricultural issues at that time. With only two years of PNoy’s term remaining, he needed to take drastic measures in food security while the country was still coping with the destruction of super typhoon “Yolanda” in November 2013. Even after Pangilinan resigned in September 2015 to run for election for his comeback bid to the Senate, PAFSAM was not abolished.

When President Duterte came into office in June 2016, he issued EO No.1 which, among other things, transferred the NFA, PCA and the PFA from PAFSAM to the Office of the Cabinet Secretary headed by Leoncio Evasco. A trusted aide at City Hall of the former Davao City Mayor, however, got into policy conflict over rice importation with NFA chief Jason Aquino, another trusted aide of President Duterte.

At the height of their feud, an artificial shortage on NFA rice erupted which caused prices of rice, including commercial ones, to shoot up to more than P45 per kilo in the markets.

The fallout between the two officials led to DA Secretary Emmanuel Piñol unfairly getting the brunt of criticisms for the rice shortage mess. To stop the down spiral of the situation, the President issued EO No. 62 last September that, among other things, restored the NFA, the PCA and the FPA back under the supervision of the Agriculture Department. In the same EO 62, President Duterte designated the Agriculture Secretary as chairman of the inter-agency NFA Council.

President Duterte finally lowered the boom on both Evasco and Aquino. The Chief Executive relieved Aquino. As of this writing, there is no NFA chief so far appointed.

On the other hand, the President waited until Evasco resigned on his own in order to run for governor in Bohol in the coming May elections next year. The President subsequently named last week  Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexie Nograles – who is on his third and last term in Congress – to take over as his new Cabinet Secretary.

To further stave off the disruption of the intramurals, President Duterte signed last Sept. 21 Administrative Order No. 13 that remove non-tariff barriers and streamlined further the administrative procedures on agricultural products. Under the DA direction, these non-tariff barriers are now being implemented by the NFA, the Sugar Regulatory Authority (SRA), and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.

Hopefully, these slew of measures would arrest the agriculture’s decline to deep abyss.