NOTES ON The Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan for the period 2004-2010:Agricultural Issues: Food security and rice and corn production

Agricultural Issues: Food security and rice and corn production




Situationer Ways forward.

“Food security” as defined in R.A. 8435 – the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act: “refers to the policy objective, plan and strategy of meeting the food requirements of the present and future generations of Filipinos in substantial quantity, ensuring the availability and affordability of food to all, either through local production or importation, oir both, based on the country’s existing and potential resource endowments and related production advantages, and consistent with the overall national development objectives an policies. However, sufficiency in rice and white corn should be pursued.”



Food security is especially relevant to rice and corn production because of the large proportion of Filipinos that are directly involved in production and consumption.



• The country has never been self-sufficient in rice and our history of importing rice goes back to the 1870s on account of the government” poor planning on food security.

• Over the 1990s (up to a few months ago), world rice prices were low and stable yet domestic consumer prices have been two to three times those of Vietnam and Thailand and also more volatile.

• Productivity-land deficit situations for corn, livestock and poultry, and fishery production; limited land, available land is inefficient.

• Conversion of agricultural land to non-agri uses

• Unsustainable, illegal farming methods and technologies

• Pollution of agricultural resources

• Natural calamities 1. Implement the Strategic Agricultural and Fisheries Development Zones or SAFDZs that have bee identified and mapped throughout the country. SAFDZs are key agricultural production areas with comparative advantage – location, soil characteristics, irrigation and support infra present and other physical features;

2. Identify existing agricultural lands, assess their production and productivity levels, and to the extent practicable and possible, protect these from conversion;

3. Identify potential agricultural expansion areas, with due consideration for competing land uses, protect these from conversion;

4. Identify marginal lands for agricultural production and provide these with appropriate technologies for basic subsistence requirements;

5. Provide infrastructure support that would link production areas to other land uses, and implement measures to increase productivity in SAFDZs, and in existing and expansion production areas;

6. Identify and delineate existing and potential agricultural, forest, and mining production areas; assess supply and demand requirements, implement measures to improve efficiency, and provide support infrastructure and other facilities; and

7. Promote water security through rehabilitation of denuded watersheds, focused irrigation programs, R & D, and the development and improvement of a water database.



National sufficiency in rice is often defended on the basis of national security – that is, distrust of the capacity and political will of the international market and community to supply food – particularly during times of international crises.



References:

1. NEDA, National Framework for Physical Planning 2001-2030, 2002

2. AIM Policy Center, ed. Luningning Achacoso-Sevilla , “The Ties that Bind: Population and Development in the Philippines 2nd ed.”2004

3. E. Boquiron, “Rice Shortage in the Philippines, unpublished work.