THE United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is a data-gathering behemoth like no other. It leaves almost no room for error, unlike most data-gathering public institutions in our country that can massage numbers, depending on the whimsy of the powers that be. The USDA’s breadth and reach go with the territory. The US, with its massive landmass, is an agricultural powerhouse. The USDA’s integrity, of course, hinges on the November 2024 presidential election. If Donald Trump wins, he will certainly fire most of the hardworking American civil servants and replace them with subservient, pliant apparatchiks. There is already a grand plan to do just that.

So when the USDA says Philippine rice imports are most likely to hit a record-high 3.8 million metric tons this 2023-2024 market year — this represents the usual one year of imports — it’s practically certain that it would be the import figure for that period, or if not, something close to it. Bagong Pilipinas can’t seem to get some relief from the spate of heartbreaking news. And the saddest news is from a sector that — at least on paper and based on his official pronouncements — is dear to the heart of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Two things will drive this record rise in rice imports. First, rice-import decisions are all taken under duress, in a state of desperation and panic. There is no clear picture of the actual supply void to be filled in the determination of the right volume to be imported, thus inflating import volumes year in and year out. Second, and the most tragic, there is no relief to fill up supply gaps other than importation because the domestic and critical rice production infrastructure and components are all broken and in need of urgent repair. Hope springs eternal on the part of Mr. Marcos, who has this undying dream for agriculture’s renaissance. A dream we all farmers share. Sorry, sir, but the realities on the ground point to this harsh reality: the broken, run-down state of Philippine agriculture.

Let us look at the state of things at the Philippine agriculture’s premier institution, the Department of Agriculture (DA).

The DA is an organizational leviathan that has forsaken its true mandate, which is to spur agricultural productivity across all major food groups, with improving the lives of farmers and agricultural producers as the inevitable result of the strides in food production. Its preoccupations — and this shift started to take place during Rodrigo Duterte’s administration — are: one, imports to fill supply gaps; and two, flood-the-zone propaganda work to cover up for its shortcomings. Simply put, the DA’s productivity, if you may call it that, is centered on its press release factory. And what can you expect from an institution where the default position during commodity shortages has consistently been importation.

Let us now take a look at the critical parts required for efficient food production through the prism of our most important crop: rice.

– Irrigation. We have a proud and glorious rice production culture hampered by the most basic requirement: water. As the water scare in June and July showed, Angat Dam was ordered to focus on supplying potable water to Metro Manila, the supply of water to rice farmers in Bulacan and Pampanga provinces be damned. Rice farmers are never a priority of the multipurpose dams, on which rice farmers are heavily reliant. Shallow tube wells, which dot all major rice-producing provinces in Central Luzon due to insufficient water, cannot function as alternatives right now because of the surging prices of gasoline and diesel. The ill-advised decision to make irrigation water free has dried up the funds for irrigators’ associations, which maintained and cleaned irrigation ditches and canals, and assigned the irrigation schedules of the rice farmers in a particular cluster. Rice farmers — this is the truth — prefer paid irrigation over the current unmaintained ditches and canals and the chaotic assignment of irrigation schedules.

– Research and development (R&D). While Filipino rice farmers are lucky that Los Baños is the base of the International Rice Research Institute, there is hardly any R&D work outside developing high-yielding rice varieties. Public research universities, such as the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), which used to be a premier research university in Asia, have lost their R&D luster. Thai agriculture students used to study at UPLB to get the best agricultural education. Now, Filipino postgraduate students with agriculture courses as their specialization want to attend Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Polity that funds the agriculture sector has a negative view of R&D, as exemplified by the now-infamous ranting of a female senator against R&D. We have forgotten that the Netherlands, a small country the size of the American state of Maryland, is the second-biggest agricultural exporter in the world and hosts the best agricultural university in the world. Its unparalleled asset? World-class agricultural R&D.

– Farm mechanization and postharvest facilities. In this area, we are the laggard among the original Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) members. We import more high-end motorbikes and Mercedes-Benz’s Brabus than modern tractors, just to cite a few samples of the tortured priorities of our supposed agricultural nation. In most farming areas of Central Luzon, the country’s rice granary, farmers have been stuck with the handheld mini-tractor called “kuliglig” for decades, as well as the 19th-century hoe.

– Credit facilities. Our rice farmers get production loans from banks and other formal sources, with interests at par with the borrowings of those in the top 0.1 percent. If this is fairness, I do not know. What we farmers know is that the interest charges of farmers in the Asean core are mostly in the single digits.

– The critically important human resource. The young do not want to go into farming. There are two versions of the average age of the Filipino rice farmer, and both are depressing. One version says the average age is 57 years; the other, more than 60 years old. Either version is a disaster. When I was 6, my farmer-father allowed me to tend to our carabaos in the open field. I started doing back-breaking work, like plowing and harrowing, in my early teens. Serious farmers start very early. But now…

– Last but not least, the budget for agriculture in the proposed 2024 budget. It is P167 billion, which is niggardly 2.90 percent of the proposed 2024 outlay. The proposed allocation is in itself proof of the very little regard the polity has for agriculture.

Are we so desperate that we are looking for rice from Argentina? We are a regular importer of cheap Argentinian wheat, which is a substitute when yellow corn supplies are down. But rice? Don’t cry for us, Argentina.