Food

Having dispatched his pesky Vice President (you know her) and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary BenHur Abalos and the Philippine National Police having executed the stunning arrest of two of the country’s most notorious fugitives, Alice Guo (who former PNP chief Panfilo Lacson says is a non-Filipino and a Chinese spy) and pastor Apollo Quiboloy (the son of god, of course), President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. is back focusing on this old love – agriculture.

Agriculture is producing food to feed the hungry. There are 15 million hungry Filipinos in my estimate. The number of malnourished children is more than seven million. Every day, 95 of our kids, or nearly 35,000 a year, die due to malnutrition. That’s genocide.

Yesterday, Sept. 11, was the 107th birth anniversary of the late Ferdinand Edralin Marcos Sr. (the Father of the Green Revolution). Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. flew by helicopter to Subic to catch smugglers (of onions, carrots and tobacco). On Friday, Sept. 13, BBM’s 67th birthday, the President flies to Guimba, Nueva Ecija with Tiu Laurel to meet with farmers.

On Tuesday, the Manila Overseas Press Club has a luncheon (11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.) forum with Agriculture Secretary Tiu Laurel at the Fairmont Hotel ballroom. Major conglomerates and senior newsmen have booked tables to hear the DA chief elaborate on his Agriculture Road Map and why agriculture is a good bet to invest in. An open forum follows his presentation/speech.

“Our economy continues to grow,” gloats Sec Kiko. However, he hastens to add, “Agriculture is not growing as fast as the entire economy. We are going down and down.” Agriculture’s share of the economy (or its share of the Gross Domestic Product or GDP), has been falling, from 10.4 percent in 2016 to 8.6 percent in 2023, its lowest ever.

That 1.8-percentage loss (10.4 less 8.6) is equivalent to P500 billion a year in lost production or to three years of $3 billion per year worth of rice imports. Our agricultural trade deficit (the amount of food we export minus the food we import) is scandalously high, P1.14 trillion – enough money to irrigate all the non-irrigated