Piñol moves to boost food production in countryside

By Luis Leoncio 

A simple program overlooked by the previous administration—the efficient use of human resources in the government— is now one of the pillars of the Department of Agriculture (DA) under the Duterte administration. 

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol brought the issue to the fore when he announced that he would recall 30,000 farm technicians and extension workers assigned to local government units (LGUs) during the previous administration to perform their proper tasks at the DA, which is to help boost food production.

“Expect the farms and the coastal areas to be bustling with the activity of agriculture and fisheries technicians in the days to come,” Piñol said as he reiterated his target to make the country self-sufficient in rice within two years, and to make farms resilient to the adverse effects of climate change.

Climate change makes everything unpredictable for local agriculture, thus, every farmer must be prepared, he said.

“We need to attain rice sufficiency in the next two years and achieve buffer stocks for rice six months before the Duterte administration ends. We do not know when the next El Niño would hit us,” Piñol said.

The DA technicians and extension workers in the provinces and towns were assigned to the LGUs after the enactment of the Local Government Code. The intent of the law was to provide local governments with skilled government workers to help in local projects.

But Piñol said their transfer to the LGUs effectively paralyzed the DA and wreaked havoc on the implementation of its agriculture and fisheries programs “because the technicians and extension workers were getting orders from the mayors and governors.”

Piñol said the LGUs “do not have enough funds” to pursue their commitment to ensure that technicians and extension workers effectively perform their tasks. Thus, instead of putting their skills to good use, many of these technicians and extension workers ended up in local government offices doing “desk work” instead of going to the fields.

“Some of them were assigned to do odd jobs, like collecting taxes, acting as market supervisors and even as security officers, which are jobs that are totally unrelated to agriculture,” Piñol said. “This situation is untenable, as talents and skills are wasted.”

Piñol said his department will enter into an agreement with the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the LGUs concerned for the return of the farm technicians and extension workers to their “mother unit.”

“Interior Secretary Ismael Sueño, himself a former governor and farmer, agreed to my proposal to enter into a tripartite memorandum of agreement [MOA] among the DILG, the DA and the LGUs to reassign the thousands of farm technicians and extension workers detailed with local governments back to the DA,” Piñol said.

“I presented the idea of the detail of the agriculture workers back to the DA during my consultations in Bicol, Samar, Leyte and Socksargen region, and the proposal was roundly accepted by the LGU executives,” he added.

Piñol said the DA would now shoulder the per-diem and other allowances for the retraining of the agriculture workers; they will receive directives and orders from the DA regional offices.

“The DA could even give them back the privileges of having bicycles, motorcycles or even four-wheeled vehicles so they could do their job effectively,” he added.

Upon the signing of the MOA, Piñol said, the agriculture and fisheries sector will effectively have an additional workforce of about 30,000.

The Philippines is currently importing rice heavily from its Southeast Asian neighbors Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. “In a worst-case scenario,” he asked, “if Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia experience severe drought, where would the Philippines get its rice supply?”

He said the Philippines could achieve rice sufficiency with the government providing all the necessary assistance to farmers.

“We will support the farmers by providing free seeds and free fertilizers for the next cropping terms,” he said. But he added that the free inputs would be a “one-shot assistance.”

There will be terms and conditions imposed before the farmers get them, he said.

Piñol said the DA would require farmers to deposit in a bank an amount equivalent to the inputs given to them by the department, so that when the next cropping season begins, the farmer would have the money to buy seeds and fertilizers.

He also urged local governments to determine the total rice production in their area to help the DA determine the number of bags of production inputs will be given to them in 2017.

“If we need to put up a communal irrigation project there, we will do that,” he said. “If you need water pumps, as well as preharvest and postharvest machines, we will give you [these], too.”

Piñol said the DA under his management would veer away from building huge irrigation projects worth billions of pesos. Such projects, he said, were not only expensive, but also had detrimental effects on the environment.

A multibillion peso Malitubog-Maridagao irrigation project in North Cotabato, for instance, was not producing the right irrigation that the farmers needed.

“When President Duterte appointed me as his agriculture secretary, he had only two mandates: Stop corruption in the agency and ensure that there is affordable and available food for every Filipino,” Piñol said. “If there’s no corruption in the DA, there will be enough funds for everybody, since the agency is one of the departments given a huge budget allocation annually.”

He cited as an example of corruption and great waste of funds the more than P100 million worth of equipment found rusting in the DA-12 compound in Tupi, South Cotabato.

Piñol said he has ordered an inquiry into the failure of officials concerned to distribute the equipment to farmer beneficiaries.