“Copy Our Neighbors” – Advice From Former NEDA Chief Cielito F Habito. My Advice: A Bigger DA Budget With Additional P50 Billion For Barangay-Based Organic Options

For PH Agriculture, former PH Director General of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Cielito F Habito has come up with the recommendation: “Copy Our Neighbors” (19 April 2022, Inquirer, https://inqm.news/xexq).

Mr Habito says:

One little piece of advice I have for our government, particularly in steering our agriculture sector toward greater dynamism, is simply to copy our neighbors.

Thank you Sir for the advice. If I may summarize you in 4 words, for PH agriculture: Big Budget, Big Science.

The Big Science of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam of whose agricultural performance we are now “trailing” according to you, especially the value chain:

They [Malysians] have clearly long understood that agriculture authorities need to look at the farm system holistically with a full value chain perspective –  that is, “from field to fork” (I like to add “finance” before “field” as well.)

Yes Sir!

On the other hand, our Secretary of Agriculture William Dar started with a holistic approach to agriculture 2 months beforeAugust 2019 when PRRD appointed him Secretary. His Manila Times column contained “The ‘New Thinking’ For Agriculture” (13 June 2019, manilatimes.net) with accompanying contributory paradigms (see “Eight Paradigms of the Newly Appointed DA Secretary in Achieving Food Secure Country” (srs.gov.ph).

I have complete trust in Mr Dar as PH Secretary of Agriculture. Let us not forget that he was the Director General who brought ICRISAT from dead last to #1 among the 15 international agricultural research agencies under the CGIAR, the 15 including IRRI.

On the other hand, appreciating Mr Habito, I believe our dear Philippines needs An Agriculture Reborn. I am thinking of the predicted short supply of fertilizers with that “World War 3” in Ukraine right now disrupting among other things agricultural exports and imports.

Also, as Pratik Parija, Mai Ngoc Chau & Ditas B Lopez write (“Rising Fertilizer Costs Are Catching Up To Rice Farmers, Threatening Supplies,” 19 April 2022, Bloomberg,Bloomberg.com):

Soaring fertilizer costs have rice farmers across Asia scaling back their use, a move that threatens harvests of a staple that feeds half of humanity and could lead to a full-blown food crisis if prices aren’t curbed.

What I will advise Mr Dar right now is a new approach to PH Agriculture:

Barangay-Based Agriculture Revitalized with Organic Options Advancing Basic Intelligence In Living Intimately with Nature (BARO A BILIN). (Ilocano to English: “New Instructions.”)

Iam thinking of Mr Dar asking PH Govt for P50 Billion more for the 2022 DA budget, now P107 Billion. The P50 Billion will be spent thus:

(1)    Grants to farmer cooperatives for production of their own organic formulas;

(2)    Loans to organic farmers with zero interest for 3 years;

(3)    DA to produce organic formulas for communities without farmer cooperatives;

(4)    DA to purchase rights of existing organic formulations from private sources;

(5)    Digital Knowledge Bank and nationwide promotion of BARO A BILIN.

With BARO A BILIN, we will be cultivating A New & Prosperous PH Agriculture!@517

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