Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 01:22:00 07/05/2008
MANILA, Philippines—Nothing that Eduardo M. Cojuangco Jr. said Thursday about the food crisis is new. The observations made by the former politician, who remains active in (backroom) politics, had been noted before by every government official who spoke on the issue. The big difference, however, is that Cojuangco is putting his money where his mouth is. [See story]
“There is no more important issue today than food security,” said the chair of San Miguel Corp. (SMC), one of Asia’s biggest food and beverage conglomerates. “The defining challenge of the future is to guarantee that people have access to food.” Noting that soaring food prices have forced many millions more of the world’s poor to go hungry, Cojuangco said that “guaranteeing an adequate supply is an important strategic goal for everyone, not just government.”
Ramon Ang, SMC president, added: “We need to boost agricultural production and help insulate our countrymen from the continued volatility of the commodities market.”
How? SMC has a big idea and it is willing to spend big bucks to bring it about. Cojuangco said that the government has identified three million hectares of idle lands that can be planted to various crops, particularly rice, corn, sugarcane, coconut and vegetables. SMC, together with the Malaysian food giant Kuok Group, wants to develop one-third of that, or one million hectares. They plan to invest as much as $1,000 per hectare for their project called “Feeding our Future.” And they guarantee to buy all the produce from the farms that will be developed under the program.
At a time that the government is groping for solutions to the food crisis and the growing discontent it has spawned, this new venture offers some relief and hope. Under this proposal the government will keep ownership of the land, while SMC and the Kuok Group will provide financial and technical expertise in developing the lands and then buy all of the produce. Presumably since these are public lands, there will be no problem this time with the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law like SMC had in Sumilao town in the southern province of Bukidnon. What the government needs to make sure though is that the farmers who will till the land get a fair return on their labors. Once that is assured and unless some really nasty devil comes out in the details, the project should get all the encouragement and support it needs from the government, the farmers and the consumers.
The food crisis has dragged on for at least four months now, and the Arroyo administration’s responses have consisted mostly of palliatives that offer temporary relief, like the massive emergency importation of rice, a heavy price subsidy to make rice affordable to the poor, and cash doles to lucky families. Of course, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her Cabinet continue to talk about the necessity of attaining food self-sufficiency at the shortest possible time. In New York last week as she prepared to return home after her 10-day visit to the United States, Ms Arroyo observed that “the new economics of rice makes it no longer cheaper to import a fraction (of the country’s needs) than to be totally self-sufficient.”
The administration has even talked about pouring P30 billion into a new program to accelerate rice production. But it has not put forward anything as bold, neat and concrete as the food production project now being proposed by SMC and the Kuok Group. Unless it has better ideas on how to put idle lands to productive uses, the administration should tell the two food giants to go full steam ahead.
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