THE official website of the Department of Agriculture (DA) declares that the agency’s mandate is “the promotion of agricultural development by providing the policy framework, public investments and support services needed for domestic and export-oriented business enterprises.”

It further adds that “in the fulfillment of this mandate, it shall be the primary concern of the department to improve farm income and generate work opportunities for farmers, fishermen and other rural workers.”

There is nothing in the law or its mandate that the DA shall protect our small farmers and fisherfolk against competition, particularly coming from imported agricultural goods. But farmers and fishers’ advocacy groups insist that the Agriculture department should protect them from “unfair competition” posed by cheap imported agricultural products through the enforcement of quantitative restrictions (outright import bans) against certain commodities, imposition of high tariffs and the provision of various subsidies like free fertilizer, irrigation, seeds, farm machines, among others. The justification for this preferential treatment is that the provision of adequate food is a national security concern that the state, through the DA, should guarantee.

There are “bleeding hearts” among the DA officials who agree to this line of thinking, and they further advance the argument by emphatically insisting that the department must champion the “cause of the small farmers and fishermen.” They add that if protection means raising prices of food products, then so be it as reducing prices should not be the primary concern of the Agriculture department but the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). For them, DA should protect the small farmers and let DTI (or other government agencies) champion the cause of the consumers for that is what “trade” is all about. Never mind the harm that protection and subsidies will cause the overall economy through high inflation, higher government budgetary deficit and lower consumption (due to high food prices) by low income families. For these ideologues, their primordial concern is to protect our small farmers and fisherfolk to ensure they continue producing and gain popular support for their future political forays. This is the role they assigned to the DA.

What about the poor consumers?

If DA exists just to protect small farmers and fishers, what about our poor local consumers who definitely outnumber the former? Shall we just allow high food

prices (which has been the prevailing regime for more than 20 years now) as a result of protection to persist and wreak havoc on the nutritional status of our people, particularly the poor? Aren’t small farmers and fishers also consumers of products that they do not produce but are essential to their family’s nutritional well-being?

The second flaw of this thinking is who are they referring to as “small farmers and fishers” when justifying continued protection and subsidies? Have these ideologues conducted a systematic analysis and identification of these small farmers and fishers, how many they are and where they are?

The problem with blanket protectionism and subsidies is that they favor mostly the commercial producers and entrepreneurs, rather than the small farmers and fishers, because the former have the means and political connection to take maximum advantage of those protection and subsidies. A glaring proof of this reality is that if QRs (quantitative restrictions) are lifted or tariffs reduced, the most vociferous objectors are found in Congress and within the ranks of commercial producers or raisers. Of course, the objection is made under the guise of protecting our small farmers and fishers, who ironically up to now, are dirt-poor as ever. But it is very obvious none of these noisy groups belong to the poor small farmers and fishers.

Damages

The result of high food prices are too common to see nowadays. The continuing rise in food prices is a constant slap on the face of an ordinary consumer whenever a visit to the wet market or grocery store is made. That same consumer will never know whether he will have enough budget to buy the same commodities from the same store that he did a week ago.

The soaring prices of sugar, pork, chicken, fish, cooking oil, among others, is a key factor in driving up our country’s inflation rate. We all know that high inflation is anti-poor because it fritters away the value of the purchasing power of the poor who have limited income sources.

A second harmful effect of protracted protection and subsidies is that it is a major contributory factor to our widening budgetary deficit. Recall when the National Food Authority (NFA) had the sole mandate to import rice — its debt ballooned to around P170 billion. Worse, it never achieved successfully its goal of buying palay (unmilled rice) at guaranteed prices from the farmers (to ensure high income for the tillers) and selling rice at low prices to the consumers. What happened is that despite the billions of pesos yearly allotted by the government to support NFA’s operations, palay prices remained low during the peak harvest season, hardly anyone wants to buy NFA rice as they are of poor quality, and there were intermittent rice shortages due to poor decision-making on the part of the NFA when to import.

The third negative consequence of high food prices is that wages of the workers in the industrial sector will have to be set at high rates to enable them to earn a decent income to keep pace with the cost of living. It is for this reason why foreign investors in the manufacturing sector opted to establish operations in China and Thailand in the 1990s and early 2000s, and Vietnam and Indonesia in the late 2000s and onward. The low compensation offered to their workers was possible because of the availability of cheaper food as a result of their efficient agricultural sector.

PBBM instruction

In one of his statements, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., concomitantly serving as the Agriculture secretary, articulated his goal of raising farm productivity (to ensure higher incomes for the farmers) while ensuring availability of nutritious and affordable food to our consumers. How the DA bureaucracy will achieve this goal given its focus on raising productivity through protection and subsidies does not spell confidence that the consumers interest will be championed.

The DA must settle first what cause it wants to champion. Should it further play the role of the godfather to our local producers by extending protection and providing a plethora of subsidies to them while allowing food prices to remain high? Or should it also pursue the pressing needs of the hundreds of millions of Filipino consumers for nutritious and affordable food? Should DA just assign the latter task to the DTI? Or should we just rename the DA as the Department of Farmers and Fishers Welfare, just like what they did in India, to make clear its priority objective.

Having this identity crisis and pursuing conflicting objectives for the department for so long will not only result in further confusion as to the real mandate of the DA but, more importantly, add more pain to the agriculture sector and desperation among our hungry consumers.