THE forthcoming summit on food security will address major challenges and enhance physical and economic access of every Filipino to sufficient, safe, nutritious and affordable food, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said on Sunday.

During the 2021 National Food Security Summit (NFFS), scheduled on May 18 to 19, stakeholders are expected to recommend needed strategies and policies to resolve major issues confronting the farming and fishing sectors, and provide inputs to update commodity and industry roadmaps under the new normal.

“We need to sustain and strengthen our food production, distribution and logistics systems as Philippine agriculture faces incredibly challenging tasks in this time of global pandemic, and natural and man-made disasters,” said Agriculture Secretary William Dar.

“The global pandemic and the resulting economic crisis continue to add to the growing threats to national food security that is already challenged by various factors such as climate change, increasing population, rising food prices, and the African swine fever (ASF) that ravaged the local hog industry,” he added.

Likewise, the DA emphasized the need to develop regional and provincial strategies that will form part of the national food security blueprint.

“We will complement the resulting national food security plan with our ‘OneDA reform agenda,’ anchored on four major pillars, namely consolidation, modernization, industrialization and professionalization. Likewise, we will continue to implement the Duterte administration’s ‘Plant, Plant, Plant program’ to sustainably increase the production of our basic food commodities like, rice, corn, vegetables, fruits, livestock, poultry and fisheries,” he added.

Dar expressed confidence that the 1.23-percent quarter-to-quarter growth rate recorded by the agriculture, fisheries, and forestry sub-sector in the first three months of the year, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), will serve as a catalyst to further improve the performance of the Philippine economy for the rest of 2021.

The DA aims to attain a 2.5-percent growth for the agriculture sector this year.

JORDEENE B. LAGARE