Pariah (2)

I’ll say it again — and again and again. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) was a huge mistake. It was based on the erroneous notion that personal land ownership was the most important thing for a farmer. It’s not. Providing food for all Filipinos is, accompanied by a decent standard of living for the farmer.

Plantations used to provide both of those. At least the responsible ones did. The irresponsible ones can be brought to heel by effective government supervision, as is done in Malaysia for instance. We need the ability to have well-managed, well-funded plantations, the way the rest of the world does. The compromise forced by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of farming cooperatives is fraught with problems, and doesn’t achieve the lowest competitive price. The CARL needs amendment to allow plantations, but with better involvement of the farmers in their operation alongside helping the small farmer make more productive use of his small plot. Such amendments, I guess, now mean waiting for the next administration. (See my column “Think sensibly” way back on June 8, 2017, on the benefits of plantations).

I’ll admit cooperatives can work—if the management of them can be given full control to modernize and operate the cooperative, and the financial freedom to do so. But as Marsman Estate Plantation Inc. will tell you, dealing with 762 individual farmers who are now landowners is fraught with risk and difficulty, and needless cost which a plantation doesn’t impose.

Sugar is the king of crops because it’s used in almost everything, from candies to cookies to sodas to ever so much more. When it was produced on huge plantations, there was enough for all our needs. Now we have to import a product that’s ideal to our climate and soil. The mechanization and upgrading of mills that other sugar-growing countries introduced years ago haven’t happened here because of CARP.

Apart from mechanization, another thing that is needed is improved methods of growing crops. Research has greatly increased the productivity of growing a crop, but that knowledge is not being used. Plantations by their very nature adopt the most modern methods. The small guy can’t afford to do this, and is oftentimes unaware of them.

The mechanization of crops is no threat to a farmers’ livelihood. We are losing farmers to the cities; we are growing short of farmers. The young don’t want to farm, so they get employed by a manufacturing company to put bolts into a product. Why not be employed instead by a plantation landlord to put seed into the ground? In both cases they aren’t given land, they’re given a job that can provide a decent life for them and their families—something too many don’t have now.

Let me repeat: I’m not suggesting that plantations replace the small farmer. I’m recommending that both work harmoniously together.

In looking at the ills of agriculture, one thing we need to do better is collaborate. Agriculture Secretary William Dar has initiated some actions along this line, but more is needed. We need a more formal and more frequent way of getting people together: farmers, fishermen, food processors, representatives of the food-consuming public, the universities, Congress, and all the involved government departments under the leadership of the Department of Agriculture. You can’t solve a problem in isolation.

Modern technology can allow us to get rid of the one thing that dramatically raises the price of produce: middlemen. There are far too many between farmer and shelf. A small example: A fisherman at the end of his day takes his catch to shore and sells to a middleman who seeks the market where he’ll get the best price. Today, that fisherman can pull out his smartphone and call the markets along the shore for the best price, negotiate and get paid all online, and then deliver directly to the market. No middleman, no extra cost.

The next president’s goal should be for the agriculture sector to grow at a minimum of 3 to 4 percent annually, preferably more. And produce enough food so that we need to import only those crops that don’t grow so well here. We should be self-sufficient in our primary crops — not through mandates by badly constructed government orders, but through farmers able to operate at higher productivity levels.

The dismal 2.5 percent contraction of farm output for the first nine months of this year says we need a revolution in how we produce food (on land and from the sea) in this country. We need a president who lists the development of our agricultural sector as of top importance — and be willing to make a radical change to achieve it.

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