Marcos is being blamed for the sugar fiasco and the onion shortage and that's so because he took on the agriculture portfolio at the worst possible time; exactly when the shit was going to hit the fan.
You have to admire his bravado. More than likely he was thinking that putting Ding Panganiban back in the department would work wonders and solve the shortage of agricultural commodities.
Unfortunately, the problem isn't that simple. It requires an overhaul of the agricultural and agrarian reform sectors, a top-to-bottom one.
What I found out doing research for a consultancy wasn't at all surprising. Two discussion papers from the Philippine Institute of Developmental Studies come to the same conclusion; the agrarian reform program hasn't been successful.
The culprit is bureaucratic inefficiency, both in the agriculture and agrarian reform departments. There is also the issue of available land and logistics, since the country is an archipelago. The infrastructure deficit affects the supply of agricultural commodities because of the cost of transport.
Rail is the cheapest option but we don't have a national railway network in place. Pre-war, Divisoria became the main market because of its proximity to Tutuban, which was the center of the railway network then. But after the war, much of the railway network wasn't rebuilt until the time of Marcos and stopped after his ouster again. It was only during the Arroyo administration that it got the funding it needed but was again shelved during the Aquino administration because of alleged corruption.
Duterte basically won the Presidency on the promise of peace and order and infrastructure development. Now the railway network rehabilitation is on-going but at a slow pace due to funding and right-of-way issues. At least the JICA-funded component, the Malolos-Calamba commuter line is set to be completed by its deadline or just a little past it.
If we're achieve food security we need to be serious about it this time around. A review of the mandate of the Department of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform is needed to streamline the bureaucracy and create synergy. The system has to be digitized and data-driven not relying on assumptions and extrapolations which doesn't represent the real picture on the ground.
This is easier said than done again under our present form of government. We really need to consider constitutional amendments and make the shift to a federal parliamentary system where there is more accountability and the need to achieve hard targets.
At present, what we have is Congressmen and Senators grandstanding and primping before the media during committee hearings. After one issue, it's on to the next until an election is around the corner. The very definition of stupid is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome each time. That's what we do when we elect the same legislators each and every election cycle.
It doesn't take a genius or something like ChatGPT to make an analysis of the root cause of our underdevelopment. We have become the second most populous country in ASEAN without the benefit of central planning and a long-term development plan. We have essentially wasted each thirty-year generational cycle because of our dysfunctional political and social structures.
Watch the hearing of the Senate Agriculture committee today and see if the members will be able to undertake specific actions to alleviate the plight of consumers and hold the government departments and agencies concerned accountable.
Nothing is going to happen again.
Both the House and the Senate are still sitting on the National Land Use Act, a key piece of legislation which will define land utilization throughout the country and define which lands are for residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural.
In the meantime, our farmers are left to struggle on their own coping with the effects of climate change, poor infrastructure, inadequate government support and being hostage to agricultural smuggling.
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