Punchline
A mission for Abono and Sinag
By Ermin Grcia Jr.
READ this news item that was published in a daily broadsheet:
“The Department of Agriculture said Sunday typhoon Mario and Luis, which struck a week earlier, cost the Philippines P1.14 billion in farm output.
The department said initial estimates showed that Mario affected 99,875 hectares of rice, and of that 3,829 hectares had no chance of recovery.
The production losses for the rice sector reached 53,800 metric tons worth P934 million, and the most affected areas were Region 3, Region 2, Region 1 and Region 8, the department said.
Mario and Luis also damaged 21,321 hectares of corn, the agency said, adding the damage to high-value crops reached P41.7 million while the damage to fisheries and livestock reached P12.2 million and P2.3 million, respectively.”
Does it give you the complete situational account of the aftermath? You might be inclined to answer in the affirmative since that’s how the reports have been delivered for you for as along as you can remember.
Actually, it doesn’t give us the complete story.
The government and the media always left out one extremely important data: the number of farmers affected by the typhoons, where they are, and the estimate of losses they incurred, namely, costs of seedlings and fertilizers, and the amount of loans they took out for the planting season.
They become faceless when calamities strike them down.
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NO INCLUSIVE GROWTH. Yet, the government continues to boast of inclusive growth, an conomic phraseology that farmers never knew existed for them.
There can never be inclusive growth under this administration and in the next until we learn to acknowledge that farmers continue to suffer 21 times every year (that’s the average number of typhoons that hit the country) and the government does nothing to protect them unless they are part of the displaced typhoon victims.
A strong indicator of the sad and worsening plight of our farmers are studies that confirm the fact that farmers’ children have no interest whatsoever in taking over parent’s farmland today or at anytime in the future. Who can blame them?
If nothing changes in our government’s policy, soon, our country will have no recourse but to import (and worse, to smuggle in) all our food because there are no longer enough farmers that will plant rice, corn, vegetables and fruits for us.
Here’s an even more tragic situation. The government is under the illusion to believe that the country will attain rice sufficiency in the near future. Sure, that can happen once Pinoys start preferring bread and potato over rice.
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FOR SINAG AND ABONO. Again, consider the above-mentioned news item.
Government computed everything, from the estimated loss in output to the economy, to the number of hectares affected, etc. It’s all a play for bureaucratic reportage.
What about the losses of the farmers who risked borrowing from loan sharks to cover their costs of seedlings, fertilizers, drying and threshing? Government doesn’t seem to care.
Then we have a Congress that thinks of every benefit and privilege that government can accord to various sectors, from senior citizens, indigents, cooperatives, persons with disabilities, importers, exporters, OFWs, to tax exemptions for big business, etc. but no one seems to value what our farmers need to survive in their endeavor to make sure we have food on the table!
Yet, it is not as if our government doesn’t have the means to help the small farmers’ lot because it does.
The government runs the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (conditional cash transfer), a pure dole-out program that runs into billions. If only 25% of it can be channeled as premiums for crop insurance to be covered by the Crop Insurance Corporation of the Phil., a government agency, more indigent farmers can survive and support their needs, more than what 4Ps can hope to accomplish. Children of farmers will become productive knowing that family farming is finally a win-win proposition, their being risks covered by insurance with one intangible yet important benefit to boot– the dignity of being productive citizens instead of being forever considered indigents all their life.
This is a proposition I submit to Mr. Rosendo So’s Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (Sinag) and his Abono partylist (with help from and Pangasinan’s 6 congress representatives although I am told 4th District Rep. Gina de Venecia already filed her own version). Unless they act today, farmers will soon be another extinct specie and we only have ourselves to blame for our children’s generation and future generations should rice become a luxury, no longer a basic commodity on their dining tables.
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UNLIQUIDATED ADVANCES. Here’s something for elected officials in Pangasinan who took charge of their annual festivals to ponder.
The officials of Lemery in Iloilo who took charge of the Saug Festival in 2008 woke up one morning last month to find themselves indicted by the Ombudsman for failing to liquidate their advances. They have been charged for malversation of public funds!
Charged with the mayor, town’s treasurer, accountant, budget officer and others including private persons who signed contracts for the event. How much was involved? Just P150,000!
In Dagupan, millions of advances for the past Bangus Festival and city fiestas remain unliquidated based on former City Auditor Virgilio Quinto’s records. Speaking of unliquidated advances, many organizations and individuals who received “funding assistance” from the city government since 2007, remain accountable.
I wonder who and how many will experience the same once COA completes its report on the advances.
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